Does a treatment for increasing social skill affect the occurrence of challenging behaviors?

There is direct evidence of an inverse functional relation between children’s rate of problem behaviors and their social interactions. This research was conducted with two children with autism interacting with each other and has two different purposes: the first to explore the emergence of spontaneous social behaviors in children with autism, the second to demonstrate the efficacy of a social skills training in decreasing challenging behaviors. Procedures based on ABA principles (prompting and reinforcement) were used. No specific intervention on problem behaviors was applied. Data showed a significant increase in spontaneous manding to peer, approach to peer, and parallel play. Problem behaviors decreased significantly as a side effect of increased social abilities. These preliminary data corroborate the use of ABA procedures with ASD