What is the practice?
Multimodal Anxiety and Social Skills Intervention (MASSI) is based on the principles of cognitive behavior therapy (CBT), addressing an individual’s thoughts, feelings, and actions, as well as the interactions among these three domains, to bring about desired changes. The therapist and adolescent work collaboratively to explore how cognitions contribute to anxious feelings and avoidance behaviors and, in turn, how these feelings and behaviors contribute to faulty cognitions.
MASSI also draws from the principles of applied behavior analysis (ABA), which assumes that behaviors have a function or purpose. Intervention is targeted at teaching appropriate behaviors to meet an individual’s goals (needs, preferences, etc.), or replacing undesirable behaviors with more acceptable behaviors that will have the same function.
MASSI therapists focus on immediate, direct, and specific feedback on performance and effort. The therapist and the individual’s parents provide direct feedback to the adolescent on implementation of new skills. Its emphasis on corrective, positive social learning experiences. MASSI emphasizes on modeling new skills, building therapeutic rapport, and developing integration of creative, alternative, and varied teaching strategies for students with autism (White et al., 2010).
Where has it been implemented?
- School settings
Where is the best place to find out how to do this practice?
References used to establish this evidence base:
- White, S. W., Albano, A. M., Johnson, C. R., Kasari, C., Ollendick, T., Klin, A., Oswald, D., & Scahill, L. (2010). Development of a cognitive-behavioral intervention program to treat anxiety and social deficits in teens with high-functioning autism. Clinical Child and Family Psychology Review, 13, 77-90. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10567-009-0062-3
- White, S., W., Ollendick, T., Albano, A. M., Oswald, D., Johnson, C., Southam-Gerow, M. A., Kim, Inyoung., & Scahill, L. (2013). Randomized controlled trial: Multimodal anxiety and social skill intervention for adolescents with autism spectrum disorder. Journal of Autism and Development Disorders, 43, 382-394. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10803-012-1577-x
