Middle Eastern Journal of Disability Studies

Abstract
Objective: Children with autism spectrum disorder are faced with numerous problems in social skills. This study was conducted to assess the impact of training the parents of children with autism spectrum disorder for effective communication skills on social skills improvement in children with autism spectrum disorder.
Methods: The present study used a pretest-posttest control-group quasi-experimental design. Purposive sampling was used to recruit 24 participants from among the mothers of autistic children between 4 and 13 years of age visiting Tehran Autism Center in the school year 2015-2016. The participants were assigned to experimental and control groups randomly. Following the pre-test the experimental group received 8 sessions of effective communication skills training.  The research instrument was the Social Skills Questionnaire—Parent (SSQ-P) (Gresham and Elliott, 1990). At the conclusion of the sessions, both groups took the post-test. Analysis of covariance (ANCOVA) was used to analyze the data.
Results: The results showed that children of the mothers in the experimental group had a better performance in terms of social skills compared with children of the mothers in the control group (p<0.001). In the experimental group, the mean and standard deviation of social skills were obtained as 21.75 and 3.74 for the pre-test and 31.27 and 22.92 for the post-test respectively; but in the control group, the mean and standard deviation were 22.58 and 1.62 for the pre-test and 22.92 and 1.62 for the post-test respectively.
Conclusion: According to the results, it can be concluded that training the parents of children with autism spectrum disorder for effective communication skills can be used for the development of intervention programs for autistic children.