Three-armed, Randomized Controlled Study to Assess the Effects of FASTER and SCOTT Trainings for Adults with High-functioning Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD)

The Freiburg Asperger Specific Therapy for Adult Patients (FASTER) is a published manualized group psychotherapy program for adults with high-functioning ASD. It aims to improve social responsiveness, social competence, and dysfunctional stress coping mechanisms, and to foster alternative behavioural patterns through group based learning processes and role play. It has been tested in a series of phase I and II studies since 2006 and validated in its present form in 17 groups. (ii)The Social COgnition Training Tool (SCOTT) is a manualized software-based training program to foster the understanding of 40 different emotions from faces, prosody, and complex social situations including more than 8 000 video and audio stimuli created with 70 professional actors. It has been successfully tested in a first 3-months open label study with 25 adults with ASD. Both programs will be applied over a period of 4 months with a minimum of 32 h of training in total.