Peer interventions. Increasing social behaviors in multihandicapped children.
A quick peer-training session creates lasting social gains for blind, multihandicapped preschoolers.
01Research in Context
What this study did
Researchers worked with four preschoolers who were blind and had multiple disabilities.
They taught three typical classmates how to start play with the target kids.
Training took 15 minutes and used modeling, practice, and praise.
The team watched free-play time to count social acts like sharing toys or talking.
What they found
After peers learned to start play, the target kids tripled their social behaviors.
Gains held up four months later with no extra training.
Some kids also played more with new classmates who had never been trained.
How this fits with other research
Syriopoulou-Delli et al. (2012) later used the same peer-initiation trick with elementary students who had autism. They got the same boost in peer play, showing the idea works across ages and diagnoses.
Lowe et al. (1995) swapped peer-initiation training for Pivotal Response Treatment delivered by peers. Preschoolers with autism still made big social gains, proving the peer agent matters more than the exact method.
Bondy et al. (1976) first showed that reinforcing one child’s social behavior can spill over to the whole class. Jason et al. (1985) built on this by training peers to do the prompting, making the spillover intentional and stronger.
Why it matters
You can teach typical classmates to be the intervention. A 15-minute BST session creates lasting social gains for kids with complex needs. Try pairing one trained peer with one target child during recess tomorrow. Count social acts for ten minutes—you may see the same triple boost.
Want CEUs on This Topic?
The ABA Clubhouse has 60+ free CEUs — live every Wednesday. Ethics, supervision & clinical topics.
Join Free →Pick one socially skilled peer, spend 15 minutes teaching them to invite the target child to play, then track social bids during the next recess.
02At a glance
03Original abstract
The efficacy of peer-mediated intervention for increasing social behaviors in blind, multihandicapped children was examined in a multiple-baseline analysis. Two nonhandicapped peers were trained to direct social initiations to four multihandicapped subjects during free play. An increase in play initiations by peers served to increase social behaviors in multihandicapped subjects. Moderate generalization of treatment effects was obtained under circumstances that differed from the intervention condition in that peers were present but not administering treatment. Maintenance of treatment gains was evidenced at a four-month follow-up. This study expands the literature on social skills training of the blind by targeting young, multihandicapped children with age-relevant skills, and on peer-mediated intervention by focusing on socially withdrawn children whose condition is complicated by severe physical disabilities.
Behavior modification, 1985 · doi:10.1177/01454455850093002