Normal children as tutors to teach social responses to withdrawn mentally retarded schoolmates: training, maintenance, and generalization.
Train typical classmates to run brief social-skills trials—withdrawn peers with ID start initiating play and keep doing it for months.
01Research in Context
What this study did
The team picked four withdrawn kids with mild intellectual disability in a regular second-grade class. They taught four typical classmates to give short social-skills lessons during recess. The tutors learned to say the kid’s name, wait for eye contact, then prompt and praise play requests.
What they found
After only six training days, the withdrawn kids asked peers to play 3–5 times more often. The gains stuck for eight weeks with no extra staff. The kids also started using the new skills at lunch and on the playground.
How this fits with other research
Jameson et al. (2008) later showed the same idea works for middle-school math facts. They swapped social targets for constant-time-delay academic trials and still got fast learning. Matson et al. (2008) added self-monitoring for kids with autism and saw both more social bids and fewer repetitive movements. Paul et al. (1987) ran a bigger class-wide model with spelling; scores beat teacher-led lessons. Together, these studies say peer tutoring is a sturdy frame—swap in the skill you need and gains hold.
Why it matters
You can turn typical classmates into mini-teachers in one recess period. Pick one social response, script the peer prompt, add edible praise at first, then fade it. The whole class gets more inclusive with zero extra adults once responding is strong.
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02At a glance
03Original abstract
The findings of the three experiments reported herein indicate that normal children can successfully teach social responses (i.e., delayed imitation cooperative play, and verbalization of positive comments) to withdrawn mentally retarded peers. The effects of the intervention generalized across stimulus and response conditions, while the trained and generalized levels of responding were maintained after the end of the intervention. Moreover, the subjects developed social responding within their classrooms and play areas parallel to the intervention and continued to increase such responding after the interruption of the intervention. Direct edible reinforcement appeared to be necessary at least during the initial period of the intervention. Vicarious edible reinforcement seemed useful to prompt the appearance of responding. Vicarious social reinforcement was ineffective at the beginning of the intervention, but apparently acquired prompting power at a later stage of training. Generalization results indicated that the similarity between the response occasions used for training and those used for testing generalization played an important role. Yet, the extensiveness of training and the development of responding within the classrooms and play areas may also have had a relevant effect. The development of social responding within the classrooms and play areas appeared to be mainly the effect of new learning. This was perhaps due to vicarious and direct social reinforcement.
Journal of applied behavior analysis, 1982 · doi:10.1901/jaba.1982.15-17