I am not sure that the following article will help you in your research; however, it is an interesting article associated with communicative developments in the  "natural environment." It is fairly recent article (2008), and I thought that it might enable you with a bit of a lead for further investigations...

Communicative Behavior in the Natural Environment: Case Studies of Two Young Children With Autism and Limited Expressive Language

http://search.proquest.com.ezproxy.liberty.edu:2048/pqcentral/docview/205008181/98EC3E03DB3D41A4PQ/2?accountid=12085

I would suggest social skills training. There are a ton of programs that you may utilize. Here is a website with printable social skills lessons and instructions on the implementation of such interventions. It is crucial that a generalization component is embedded within the intervention. 

http://csefel.vanderbilt.edu

Hi Micah, interventions specifically for acculturation-induced social skills defecits i.e. Cross-cultural household and / or cross-cultural households with a child with high functioning autism and associated social skills defecit.

thanks for asking to clarify and thanks in advance for any help.

merisa

Hi Marisa,

As mentioned above, there are lots of interventions to support children with ASD in developing social skills. I haven't come across anything myself that explicitly focuses on cross-cultural differences and I think it would be difficult at times to parse out difficulties due to cultural misunderstandings and difficulties due to deficits in social cognition and language.. in my opinion, any intervention may have to be very specific. Some children with ASD who struggle with language development can find it challenging to try and learn three languages (if both parents speak different languages and are not native English speakers). This can be compounded by pragmatic language difficulties. I would suggest that interventions which focus on development of theory of mind and social understanding would be useful. Hanen org have developed a programme to foster social communication called Talkability which promotes perspective taking, etc. Carol Gary's social stories and comic strip conversations would also help fill in the gap in social understanding for children with such difficulties.

Best of luck, Micaela

Thank you Micaela,  very interesting and helpful.  So can we take a moment to look at the 'theory of mind' / perspective taking side together.  An example: If a child is say playing games (physical) games that would be considered inappropriate in our culture but not in another, say smacking or rubbing bottoms just to use as an example.  How can interventions on perspective taking / theory of mind alone tackle the way he lives within two cultures?  Would you need a specific mechanism to address issues as they arise or would it be prudent to gather information on differences in social cultures say from the parents and to build games & stories around those differences?  or could interventions, over time, give him the personal capabilities to be able to read the micro expressions of those he plays with where he might see any discomfort on their part? Thoughts?

Thank you Micaela,  very interesting and helpful.  So can we take a moment to look at the 'theory of mind' / perspective taking side together.  An example: If a child is say playing games (physical) games that would be considered inappropriate in our culture but not in another, say smacking or rubbing bottoms just to use as an example.  How can interventions on perspective taking / theory of mind alone tackle the way he lives within two cultures?  Would you need a specific mechanism to address issues as they arise or would it be prudent to gather information on differences in social cultures say from the parents and to build games & stories around those differences?  or could interventions, over time, give him the personal capabilities to be able to read the micro expressions of those he plays with where he might see any discomfort on their part? Thoughts?

Thank you Micaela,  very interesting and helpful.  So can we take a moment to look at the 'theory of mind' / perspective taking side together.  An example: If a child is say playing games (physical) games that would be considered inappropriate in our culture but not in another, say smacking or rubbing bottoms just to use as an example.  How can interventions on perspective taking / theory of mind alone tackle the way he lives within two cultures?  Would you need a specific mechanism to address issues as they arise or would it be prudent to gather information on differences in social cultures say from the parents and to build games & stories around those differences?  or could interventions, over time, give him the personal capabilities to be able to read the micro expressions of those he plays with where he might see any discomfort on their part? Thoughts?

Thank you Micaela,  very interesting and helpful.  So can we take a moment to look at the 'theory of mind' / perspective taking side together.  An example: If a child is say playing games (physical) games that would be considered inappropriate in our culture but not in another, say smacking or rubbing bottoms just to use as an example.  How can interventions on perspective taking / theory of mind alone tackle the way he lives within two cultures?  Would you need a specific mechanism to address issues as they arise or would it be prudent to gather information on differences in social cultures say from the parents and to build games & stories around those differences?  or could interventions, over time, give him the personal capabilities to be able to read the micro expressions of those he plays with where he might see any discomfort on their part? Thoughts?

Hi Merisa,

All of the above might be indicated. As each child is very different, they may have different levels of social understanding. Some children are good at watching and copying and so will do what others are doing. They may learn quickly that "when I do that with X, it's okay but when I do that with Y it's not okay."  Some children have to be taught more explicitly, for example, many young children with ASD need to be taught how to take turns, share, lose gracefully - basic social / play skills. This can be done using 'top-down' strategies which fill in the social information, for example, social stories which tell children what people generally do in a certain situation ("my friends also like to win"), to using prompts and supports in real time while the situation is going on / while the game is happening (adults supporting, turn-taking rotas, visual prompts about how the game is played). We can teach children to read other people's expressions which can help them modulate their behaviour but we have to bear in mind that other people often mask how they are feeling. I think a combination of all of the above depending on the social understanding, age, ability and experience of the child. Hope that makes sense, Micaela

Hi Merisa,

I think it would be a very big ask for a young child who has not developed theory of mind in one culture to understand it across multiple cultures and to comprehend why certain behaviours are acceptable in one setting and not another. That requires a sophisticated sense of context and theory of mind, as well as an ability to understand consequences of our actions and then modify those actions accordingly. As Micaela has suggested, I am not sure how you would distinguish social "deficits" that were due to ASD from those which were due to cross cultural inexperience.

Hi Carolyn, What if the child was 9 or 10 and well past the stage that theory of mind ought to have been developed.  Would your response differ?  Also would you need to distinguish between ASD social deficits and cross cultural ones in developing a therapy strategy?  Surely the distinction between the two only becomes important if it relates to research?  Thanks for your input.  Merisa

Hi Carolyn, What if the child was 9 or 10 and well past the stage that theory of mind ought to have been developed.  Would your response differ?  Also would you need to distinguish between ASD social deficits and cross cultural ones in developing a therapy strategy?  Surely the distinction between the two only becomes important if it relates to research?  Thanks for your input.  Merisa

Hi Carolyn, What if the child was 9 or 10 and well past the stage that theory of mind ought to have been developed.  Would your response differ?  Also would you need to distinguish between ASD social deficits and cross cultural ones in developing a therapy strategy?  Surely the distinction between the two only becomes important if it relates to research?  Thanks for your input.  Merisa

Hi Carolyn, What if the child was 9 or 10 and well past the stage that theory of mind ought to have been developed.  Would your response differ?  Also would you need to distinguish between ASD social deficits and cross cultural ones in developing a therapy strategy?  Surely the distinction between the two only becomes important if it relates to research?  Thanks for your input.  Merisa

Hi Merisa, impairments of Theory of Mind affect people with ASD throughout their entire lifetime, although the degree to which this is an issue varies. ToM can be taught, however it is usually rote learned through social stories, scripts and the like. Adults on the autism spectrum usually still rely on scripts in their head to process social appropriateness and interactions, ie it doesn't become a natural response. 9 or 10 might be an appropriate age for neurotypical children to have developed ToM, however this is not necessarily the case with ASD. Regarding developing a therapeutic strategy, I think  it depends on the context of the therapy and the purpose of the intervention as to whether separating out ASD deficits from cultural ones is necessary, and I'm not sure how this would be possible anyway. Social stories depicting cross-cultural situations would be a great way to facilitate understanding of this. Thanks, Carolyn

If this is about autistic children - you don't say much about their characteristics - not so much ToM comes to mind but rather generalization and the overlapping concept of central coherence, otherwise known as 'context blindness'.

Whatever social skills-training you would consider I would not be optimistic of teaching such children to behave in different cultures. Choose one (sub)culture, which is hard enough.

Moreover executive problems with 'shifting' may also stand in the way of applying different sets of social behavior. All of these autism characteristics are rather resilient, so training should not aim at 'curing' these. Behavioristic approaches seem the most applicable.

Behavior change through 'insight' is usually asking much too much. Even normal adults have trouble with the latter, let alone people who by definition have social and communicative deficits.