Performance- and Theater-Based Interventions for Supporting Social Cognition and Social Communication in Autistic Youth: A Review and Theoretical Synthesis

Abstract

Social skills interventions (SSIs) are commonly used to improve social functioning in youth with autism spectrum disorder (ASD), which is a condition characterized by differences in social cognition and social communication. Although more traditional SSIs have used knowledge-based, didactic instruction, recent research has explored the utility of performance-based SSIs, which use various activities to support implicit learning of social skills in supportive, enriched environments. This article reviews the extant literature evaluating the effectiveness or efficacy of five performance-based SSIs using theater-based approaches on social cognition and social communication. Overall, this body of literature suggests social communication gains that include increased peer interactions, peer liking, and reciprocal friendships, as well as social cognitive gains in theory of mind and affect recognition. This review also discusses theoretical models that may help explain the emerging strengths of performance- and theater-based SSIs with underlying hypotheses related to the social communication and social cognitive differences in ASD. Limitations of performance-based SSIs in the evidence-base include several approaches in initial stages of research with small sample sizes and limited maintenance of effects. Future research should aim to bridge the research-to-practice gap and use more rigorous designs and more diverse samples, including those with cooccurring intellectual disability.

A framework for neurodiversity-affirming interventions for autistic individuals.

“…Importantly, there is a nascent body of interventions that do precisely this, which have begun to show an intriguing pattern of empirical results. They positively impact those selfsame challenge domains that are traditionally targeted (e.g., difficulties with social connection), but without explicitly doing so (i.e., without trying to teach rules for “correct” behavior; McDonald et al, 2022). In this way, they are often incidentally achieving the same goals that have long been targeted, while explicitly focusing on goals that have often been ignored, and engaging a different (and perhaps more humane) set of mechanisms and contingencies.…”