An evaluation of the effects of A Social Interaction Training Package on Mentally Handicapped Preschool Children

Abstract

The training package was designed to accomplish two specific goals: (a) to provide teachers with operationally defined reciprocal play responses which facilitate social interactions, and (b) to help teachers use effective prompting and praising strategies to get a peer helper to initiate play responses with his withdrawn peer. To evaluate the package, the following research question was posed: Can a training package, administered by teachers, result in increases in specific social initiations of peer helpers and concomitant increases in social interactions of withdrawn peers beyond those which would occur in a free play situation?