Social Skills Assessment and Intervention with Children and Adolescents: Guidelines for Assessment and Training Procedures

Children who persistently exhibit social skills deficits experience both short and long-term negative consequences, and these negative consequences may often be precursors of more severe problems later in life. If untreated, researchers have indicated that social skills deficits in early childhood are relatively stable over time, related to poor academic performance and may be predictive of social adjustment problems and serious psychopathology in adolescence. Procedures for linking assessment and classification of social skills problems to treatments are briefly reviewed. A number of procedures have been identified as effective methods for treating social skills deficits. The myriad of procedures can be classified into three categories: (1) operant conditioning, (2) social learning, and (3) cognitive-behavioral procedures. In practice, behavioral rehearsal is often incorporated into treatments and most of the effective social skills interventions are combined procedures rather than a single technique. Guidelines for implementing major treatment components are discussed and an overall implementation plan is presented.