Unprogrammed effects of training high-status peers to interact with severely handicapped children.

The team picked high-status and low-status kids in one elementary class. They taught each group how to start play or talk with classmates who had severe disabilities.

The class had four students with intellectual disability. The researchers used an ABAB reversal design. They measured how often all kids, trained or not, started interactions.

Training the popular kids created a bigger wave. Untrained classmates began to join in far more often than when only low-status peers had been trained.

The effect reversed when training stopped and came back when it returned, showing clear control.

Gerhardt et al. (1991) later showed the same peer-initiation trick also lifts motor play, extending the 1987 social result to new skills.

Lewis et al. (1976) had already proven that modeling and praise can grow sharing and smiling; the 1987 paper sharpens that idea by targeting the status of the peer who gives the prompt.

Naraian (2010) sounds like a contradiction—high-schoolers said inclusion felt empty without structure. The gap is age and training: teens got no coaching, while the 1987 study gave clear scripts to the right peers.

You can multiply social chances for students with disabilities without training every child. Identify the class leaders, teach them two simple ways to start an interaction, and watch the room follow. One short lesson to the right peer may do more than hours of one-to-one aide support.