Promoting reciprocal interactions via peer incidental teaching.

Three preschoolers with autism played in a regular classroom.

The researchers taught four typical classmates to use "incidental teaching."

During free play the peers waited for the child to show interest, then asked questions like "What color is that?" and gave hints until the child answered.

Adults coached the peers at first, then stepped back.

The team counted how many back-and-forth turns happened between the children.

All three children with autism started having longer two-way conversations.

Their reciprocal turns doubled or tripled compared with baseline.

The gains stayed high after adults stopped helping the peers.

When the kids moved to new toys, the talking dropped some, showing limited generalization.

Kydd et al. (1982) showed that changing how adults answer repetitive questions also builds turn-taking.

Raslear et al. (1992) moves that work forward by letting typical peers deliver the prompts instead of grown-ups.

Tanguay et al. (1982) used the same multiple-baseline design with preschoolers and found self-instruction helped desk work; here peer prompts helped social talk.

Root et al. (2017) later proved that ADOS Social Communication scores match real peer chatter, so you can use those scores to pick who will benefit most from peer teaching.

You can turn classmates into tiny therapists during recess.

Pick one or two sociable peers, teach them to wait, ask, and prompt, then let playtime do the work.

Track conversation turns for a week; if they rise, fade yourself out and celebrate.

Start with one toy area, then add others to widen the gains.