The Impact of Emotion Regulation Training on Social Skills of Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder

Background and Purpose: Since children with autism spectrum disorder are at risk for emotional and social problems, the purpose of this study was to investigate the effectiveness of emotional regulation training on social skills of children with autism spectrum disorder. Methods: The research method was quasi-experimental with pretest-posttest and control group design. For this purpose, 25 children with autism spectrum disorder were selected and randomly assigned to two experimental and control groups. The experimental group received emotional regulation training in eight sessions, but the control group did not receive this training. Both groups were evaluated in the stages of pretest and post-test by social skills questionnaire (Stone, 2003). For analysis of data, covariance analysis was used. Results: The results of data analysis indicated that after the intervention, the experimental group had a better performance compared to the control group in the areas of emotional perception, initiation and maintenance of interaction (P <0.01). Conclusion: Based on the results of this study, training of emotional regulation by improving the emotional adjustment skills in social relationships and emotional and cognitive perspective taking, improves the emotional understanding, initiation and maintenance of social interaction in children with autism spectrum.