CAS Social Skills Development Competency 1 — Questions and Answers
Question 1: Which foundational social communication skill, often impaired in autism, involves sharing focus on an object or event with another person?
- Theory of Mind
- Joint attention (Correct answer)
- Reciprocal language
- Pragmatic reasoning
Correct answer: Joint attention
Joint attention is the ability to coordinate attention between a person and an object or event, and it is a core early deficit in autism that underlies later social development.
Question 2: Social Stories were developed by which autism specialist to help individuals understand social situations and expected behaviors?
- Temple Grandin
- Carol Gray (Correct answer)
- Barry Prizant
- Ivar Lovaas
Correct answer: Carol Gray
Carol Gray developed Social Stories in 1991 as short, individualized narratives that describe social situations, cues, and appropriate responses for individuals with ASD.
Question 3: What term describes the difficulty many individuals with ASD have in understanding that others hold different thoughts, beliefs, and perspectives from their own?
- Alexithymia
- Executive dysfunction
- Theory of Mind deficit (Correct answer)
- Sensory defensiveness
Correct answer: Theory of Mind deficit
Theory of Mind (ToM) deficit refers to difficulty attributing independent mental states to others, which significantly impacts social understanding and interaction in autism.
Question 4: The PEERS (Program for the Education and Enrichment of Relational Skills) intervention is primarily designed for which population?
- Toddlers with nonverbal autism
- Adolescents and young adults with ASD (Correct answer)
- Adults with intellectual disability only
- Preschool-age children with developmental delays
Correct answer: Adolescents and young adults with ASD
PEERS is an evidence-based social skills program developed at UCLA specifically targeting adolescents and young adults with ASD, focusing on making and keeping friends.
Question 5: Which type of intervention involves typically developing peers being trained to initiate and sustain social interactions with students with ASD during natural school activities?
- Video modeling
- Social Thinking curriculum
- Peer-mediated instruction and intervention (Correct answer)
- Cognitive behavioral therapy
Correct answer: Peer-mediated instruction and intervention
Peer-mediated instruction and intervention (PMII) trains typical peers to serve as social partners, increasing the frequency and quality of social interactions for students with ASD in inclusive settings.
Question 6: When a social skill learned in a structured therapy session is successfully used at a playground and in a grocery store, this is an example of:
- Maintenance
- Generalization (Correct answer)
- Acquisition
- Fluency
Correct answer: Generalization
Generalization is the transfer of a learned skill across different settings, people, materials, and situations beyond where it was originally taught.
Question 7: Which Social Thinking concept developed by Michelle Garcia Winner describes people who appear socially awkward but are trying to follow social rules?
- Superflex
- Social detective
- Stuck Brain
- Somewhat socially thinking (Correct answer)
Correct answer: Somewhat socially thinking
The 'Somewhat Socially Thinking' profile in the Social Thinking framework describes individuals who are aware of social expectations and try to comply but still struggle with social nuance.
CAS Social Skills Development Competency 1
Which foundational social communication skill, often impaired in autism, involves sharing focus on an object or event with another person?