Developmental issues in social-skills assessment and intervention with children and adolescents.
Match every social-skills lesson to the child’s age—preschoolers need play games, teens need real-peer scripts.
01Research in Context
What this study did
Cohen et al. (1993) wrote a narrative review. They looked at how kids grow from preschool to high school.
The authors asked: do our social-skills lessons fit each age? They read earlier papers and gave advice.
What they found
The review says one size does not fit all. Preschoolers need simple sharing games. Teens need peer negotiation scripts.
Programs that ignore age often flop. Future work should test stage-matched lessons.
How this fits with other research
Three 1993 reviews form a matched set. Reiss et al. (1993) zoom in on teens and push for generalization plans. Singh et al. (1993) zoom in on little kids and praise operant tactics. Together they echo L et al.: tailor the target and the method to the age.
Later work keeps extending the idea. Lindsay (2002) shows preschool autism tools. Kleinert et al. (2007) survey seventy-nine child studies and still complain most lessons are not stage-matched. Capio et al. (2013) move the lens to adults with ASD plus severe ID and find the field almost empty—they borrow early-childhood steps to fill the gap.
No clash appears. The 1993 call simply grows: check age first, then pick skills, then pick formats.
Why it matters
Before you write a social goal, jot the learner’s age in the box. A kindergartener may need “touches friend gently,” while a seventh grader may need “texts friend to check in.” Use brief role-plays for little ones and longer peer projects for teens. This small habit can lift skill use and maintenance.
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02At a glance
03Original abstract
In recent years, social-skills training has become an increasingly common intervention. Recipients of skill training programs have included children of all ages as well as adults, yet relatively few systematic attempts have been made to incorporate developmental considerations into program design and evaluation. Developmental research indicates that significant normative changes take place during the preschool, grade school, and adolescent years in domains such as the complexity of children's social reasoning, the focus and duration of their peer interactions, the nature of peer-approved (and disapproved) behaviors, the organization of the peer group, and the extent and nature of peer influence. Although a full understanding of the impact that these developmental changes may have on the effectiveness of various social-skills interventions awaits future research, the potential implications are numerous. In this article, developmental changes in children's peer relationships are reviewed. The implications that these changes may have for the assessment of social skills, for the design of skill training programs, and for future research are discussed.
Behavior modification, 1993 · doi:10.1177/01454455930173002