Introduction: Autism spectrum disorders are a group of rapidly growing neurodevelopmental disorders, manifested by significant deficits in social skills and restricted and repetitive patterns of behaviour and interests. Adolescents with autism spectrum disorder have difficulties with peer interaction, cooperation, communication and as a result, in education and employment. These problems often lead to isolation, low self-esteem, anxiety, depression and unemployment. Occupational therapy interventions that improve social skills in adolescents with autism spectrum disorder are important, but the lack of practice-based evidence in this area is quite problematic. Purpose: The purpose of this diploma work is to identify what type of interventions occupational therapists use in adolescents with autism spectrum disorder to improve their social skills and what are characteristics of these interventions. Methods: We performed a scoping literature review, presented by PRISMA diagram. We searched for articles in the following databases: CINAHL, Web of Science, OTseeker and COBISS. The searching strategy in English was: occupation* or occupational therap* or OT and autism or autism spectrum disorder or ASD or asperger* and youth or adolescent* or teenager* or »young adult*« and social* or social skill* or social interaction*. In Slovenian we used keywords: delovna terapija ali delovni terapevt* in avtizem ali spektroavtistična motnja. 10 articles were included in the final analysis. Results: The thematic qualitative analysis extracted themes and sub-themes. The main themes were types of interventions, in sub-themes we found interventions using technology, role-playing, theory of mind based interventions and mirror neuron based interventions; characteristics of interventions, the sub-themes were a client-centered interventions and group interventions; and the results of interventions, the sub-themes were recognising emotions in other people, improving nonverbal communication and improving verbal communication. Discussion and conclusion: Successful occupational therapy interventions to improve social skills in adolescents with autism spectrum disorder are based on role-playing with element of motor skills, technology to further motivate adolescents and knowledge of theory of mind. Although occupational therapists have a lot of knowledge and potential in this field, these kind of interventions are more often performed by other professions.
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