An evaluation of individually delivered Secret Agent Society: A multi-component social skills intervention for children with Asperger syndrome

In children aged 8-12 years with Asperger Syndrome, is the Secret Agent Society social skills intervention program effective in improving social skills, emotion regulation, emotion management strategies, social perception and self-report popularity.

Status

Not yet recruiting

Phases

Unknown

Study type

Interventional

Source

ANZCTR

Registry ID

ACTRN12613000591752

Enrollment

Registered

2013-05-24

Start date

2013-06-03

Completion date

2013-07-19

Last updated

2020-01-13

For informational purposes only — not medical advice. Sourced from public registries and may not reflect the latest updates. Terms

Conditions

None listed

Brief summary

The current study will trial the effectiveness of the Secret Agent Society (SAS) program delivered individually to children with Asperger syndrome. Originally designed as a group-based intervention, SAS has been found to result in a variety of benefits for children including improvements in their social skills, ability to regulate their emotions and knowledge in dealing with bullying and teasing. As such, it is anticipated that the individually delivered SAS protocol adopted in this study will result in similar improvements. Results from the study is expected to increase practitioners’ and parent’s confidence in delivering SAS individually to children and potentially increase the intervention’s reach.

Interventions

The Secret Agent Society (SAS) program (Beaumont, 2010a) is a multi-component social skills intervention program for children aged 8 to 12 years old with Asperger Syndrome (AS). It was specifically designed as a group intervention to improve children’s emotional understanding and social skills through weekly group sessions, parent training, teacher tip sheets and a multi-level computer game (Beaumont, 2010a). Current study will be evaluating the SAS program delivered individually. The manualised program comprises of an initial parent information session and 9 weekly 75-minute sessions. Both parents can attend all sessions, including the parent information session, with the child. The graduate psychology student administering the program will spend the first 60 minutes of each session engaging the child in various therapeutic games and activities. This will be followed by a 15-minute review of the program content to the parent. Tips on how parents can support their child in honing their social skills will be discussed. Weekly tip sheets will also be provided through the parents to teachers so that their social skills in school will also be reinforced. Parents and teachers will be required to complete weekly home-school diaries to monitor their child's social skills and to reward their efforts at applying learnt skills.

Study design

Allocation

Non-randomised trial

Intervention model

Other

Primary purpose

Educational / counselling / training

Masking

Open (masking not used)

Eligibility

Sex/Gender

All

Age

8 Years to 12 Years

Healthy volunteers

Inclusion criteria

The inclusion criteria are: (a) an AS diagnosis confirmed by a paediatrician, (b) a WASI-II pro rated IQ score of 85 or above, (c) aged between 8 and 12 years, (d) the ability to read English, (e) have a typically developing sibling aged 8 to 12 years, (f) not participating in any psychotherapy or other interventions over the course of the study, and (g) parents with DASS-21 scores within normal or mild range and Parenting Scale total score of less than 3.2.

Exclusion criteria

N/A

Outcome results