Application of Latent Class Analysis to Identify Subgroups of Children with Autism Spectrum Disorders who Benefit from S
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ORIGINAL PAPER
Application of Latent Class Analysis to Identify Subgroups of Children with Autism Spectrum Disorders who Benefit from Social Skills Training Vera Dekker1,2 · Maaike H. Nauta2,3 · Marieke E. Timmerman4 · Erik J. Mulder5 · Pieter J. Hoekstra1,2 · Annelies de Bildt1,2
© The Author(s) 2020
Abstract With Latent Class Analysis applied on data of 98 children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) (9–12 years; 17 girls) participating in social skills training (SST) in a randomized controlled trial (Dekker et al. 2019), four subgroups were detected, based on social-communicative skills before, and response patterns to training. Two subgroups improved after SST. Characterizing the subgroups based on participant and intervention characteristics showed that improvement was related to lower parent-reported perceived difficulty of social-communicative skills at start, higher verbal ability, younger age and milder symptoms of ASD and anxiety. The lowest performing non-improving subgroup participated more often in SST without parent/teacher involvement, compared to all other subgroups. Response to SST in ASD seems to vary depending on participant characteristics. Keywords Social skills training · Autism spectrum disorder · Randomized controlled trial · Participant and intervention characteristics
Introduction
Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (https://doi.org/10.1007/s10803-020-04678-y) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users. * Annelies de Bildt [email protected] 1
Department of Psychiatry, University of Groningen, University Medical Center Groningen, Groningen, The Netherlands
2
Accare, University Center for Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, PO Box 660, 9700 AR Groningen, The Netherlands
3
Department of Clinical Psychology and Experimental Psychopathology, University of Groningen, Groningen, The Netherlands
4
Department of Psychometrics and Statistics, University of Groningen, Groningen, The Netherlands
5
Center for Intellectual Disabilities and Psychiatry, GGZ Drenthe, Assen, The Netherlands
Since limitations in social communication and interaction are core characteristics of an Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD), many of the treatment approaches for ASD focus on social communicative skills, often in the form of Social Skills Training (SST). Many studies have been conducted into the effect of SST for children and adolescents with ASD and overall, on group-level, moderate to large effect sizes have been found (Gates et al. 2017; Wolstencroft et al. 2018). Much less is known on whether specific subgroups of participants exist that benefit more from specific (characteristics of) SST. The current study aimed to contribute to this subject by investigating whether subgroups can be identified of participants who respond differently to SST with or without parent and teacher involvement, and by relating these subgroups to multiple dimensions such as participant and intervention characteristics. The authors of two recent meta-an
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