Sophia Salas and Hope Ruedin, “Effect of the Social and Relational Skills Program PEERS® in Adolescents with NF1 on Social Skills”
Mentors: Bonita Klein-Tasman and Danielle Glad, Psychology

Social skills deficits have been observed in adolescents in the NF1 population, which often affects ability to maintain friendships – lowering quality of life. Currently, literature and interventions to mitigate these deficits among adolescents with NF1 are sparse. As a result, our lab began an online telehealth study using eight adolescent participants with NF1 and their parents. The protocol for this research was created through adapting UCLA’s nationally successful fourteen-week social skills building Program for the Education and Enrichment of Relational Skills or PEERS® to a modified sixteen-week program. Originally, PEERS® was developed for adolescents diagnosed with Autism Spectrum Disorder but has since expanded to multiple groups of adolescents with varying social skills deficits, including those diagnosed with ADHD. The goal of this study is to observe social outcomes in adolescents with NF1 following a sixteen-week PEERS® protocol in order to measure its effectiveness in improving the social skills in the NF1 population. Both the parents and adolescents will complete questionnaires online such as the Quality of Socialization Questionnaire and the Social Skills Improvement System at two time points to measure social knowledge growth through completion of the program. At the time of the symposium, only data gathered when the adolescents start the group will be available. This poster will describe the reason for the use of this approach and provide a description of the social functioning of the members of the group, but will not yet include information about outcomes of the intervention. This research is critical in improving therapeutic approaches to help adolescents in this population increase their social functioning and therefore improve quality of life.