Describe the interventions of independent living skills that can improve the quality of interactions between young adults with ASD and others.

Question

What will be an ideal response?

Answer 1

Interventions involve providing explicit instruction in conversational skills, turn-taking, initiating interactions, cooperating, etc. Instruction should target specific skills needed to promote success when connecting with others in the classroom, workplace, and community settings. “Connecting adolescents with ASD to community experiences that will launch them seamlessly and successfully toward adulthood is a central task of secondary and transition education”. Our efforts to support meaningful community participation “can have a long-term impact on both the proximal outcomes and long-term trajectories of these important members of our schools and communities” implemented an intervention designed to assist with the transition to adulthood through the development of social cognition skills. They implemented Virtual Reality using Second Life, a three-dimensional virtual world software program. The intervention included avatars, representing the user in a virtual world, to navigate environments including an office building, a fast food restaurant, an apartment, a coffee house, an outlet store, a school, and a park. This intervention provided opportunities to engage in, practice, and to attain feedback on relevant young adult social scenarios such as interacting with a friend, initiating conversation, meeting strangers, negotiating with a salesman, participating in a job interview, managing conflict with coworkers, and going on a date. Participants who navigated the virtual reality social situations in Kandalaft et al.’s research reported that the intervention provided “years of social training in just a few sessions” and that many people could benefit from the intervention. They said that using the computer intervention assisted with boosting their overall confidence and drawing them into social situations, and it gave them a greater willingness to experience social opportunities.