Enhancing Social Skills of Young Children With ADHD: Effects of a Sibling-Mediated Intervention.
Training siblings to run BST at home quickly doubles sharing, helping, and compromise in preschoolers with ADHD.
01Research in Context
What this study did
Three preschoolers with ADHD played at home with their older brothers and sisters. The researchers taught each sibling to use Behavioral Skills Training (BST) in five short lessons.
The sibling coaches learned to model sharing, helping, and compromising. They then gave praise and gentle prompts during play. The team filmed every play session to count social acts.
What they found
All three children with ADHD quickly doubled their positive social acts. Sharing, helping, and compromising stayed high even after coaching stopped.
The gains were large and immediate. No extra rewards or tokens were needed.
How this fits with other research
Bermúdez et al. (2020) also used BST to teach social skills, but adults showed short videos instead of siblings giving live coaching. Both studies got big gains, showing BST works no matter who runs it.
Knott et al. (2007) watched autistic children and their siblings for a year. Social bids grew slowly without training. Hutchins et al. (2020) proves that brief, planned BST speeds that growth up.
Wichnick-Gillis et al. (2019) taught autistic kids to start conversations at school with scripts. Later, the kids used the same skills at home with siblings. Hutchins et al. (2020) flips the order: train the sibling first, and the child with ADHD gains right away.
Why it matters
You can turn brothers and sisters into mini-coaches in one afternoon. Teach them to model, praise, and prompt during regular play. No clinic, no extra staff, no fancy toys. Expect quick jumps in sharing, helping, and compromise that last for weeks.
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02At a glance
03Original abstract
Children with attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) are at risk for experiencing problems with social functioning that are associated with adverse outcomes in adolescence and adulthood. To date, the most common ADHD treatments for children, psychostimulants and adult-mediated interventions, have had limited success reducing social impairments associated with ADHD. Using a non-concurrent multiple baseline across participants design, we examined the efficacy of a sibling-mediated social intervention for reducing negative and increasing positive social behaviors of three children with ADHD. We also assessed implementation integrity by the siblings, and acceptability from the perspective of the participant with ADHD, the siblings, and the parents. Results indicated that siblings learned and used specific social skills strategies with their siblings with ADHD that lead to increases in sharing, helping, and compromising behaviors for children with ADHD compared with baseline (Tau-U = 0.9531, p < .001). Summary of findings, study limitations, implications for research, and practice are discussed.
Behavior modification, 2020 · doi:10.1177/0145445519843473