3 - (SYM 3) Individualized Social Profiles as Interventions Outcomes for Neurodiverse Youth

Social intervention has been a long-standing focus of clinical research in autism (Gates et al., 2017). These interventions have traditionally conceptualized outcomes unidimensionally: more or less social skills. However, recent research reveals that multidimensional, idiographic social profiles better characterize social functioning, consisting of acquisition (i.e., lack of knowledge of skills) and performance (i.e., not enacting already known skills) deficits and strengths (Gresham et al., 2010; Gates et al., 2022). These profiles may reveal previously-hidden intervention responses - for instance, a youth may feel they have greater social knowledge, even if their overall social skills do not change. To date, no work has examined social profiles as intervention outcomes in youth.

55 autistic youth were randomly assigned to two 10-week group social skill intervention conditions, SDARI (non-didactically engaging in and learning a target skill) and FACT (unstructured social activities), targeting different outcomes (see Table 1). Children and parents completed the Social Skills Improvement System (Gresham & Elliot, 2008) at baseline, endpoint, and 10-week follow-up. Social profiles were created to assess the distribution of social skills deficits and strengths for each population (Table 1). Generalized estimating equations (GEE; Hanley et al. 2003), accounting for nesting in groups, estimated the association between treatment condition and overall social skills and social profiles.

No effects were found for overall parent- or self-reported social skills (ps> .707.), or parent-reported social profiles (ps > .649). However, youth themselves reported no changes in social deficits (ps> .110), but improvements in their own social strengths in FACT relative to SDARI (B=6.40, p=.038), which maintained at follow-up (B=11.154, p=.028).

Using traditional outcome measures, this trial would be said to reveal no effects on overall social skills. However, use of social profiles as outcomes reveals a novel, crucial effect: youth in the FACT condition reported relative increases in their own sense of their social strengths. This may be because the unstructured social environment of FACT provides a naturalistic space for youth to practice and build social strengths. This finding highlights the importance of examining complex social outcomes multidimensionally, and the potential for social interventions to discreetly impact outcomes that affirm and support the value of neurodiverse individuals.