Training and Generalization of Social Skills

Abstract

Treatment and generalization effects of a social skills training package for children were evaluated. Subjects were two children referred for outpatient treatment of psychological and interpersonal problems. A multiple baseline across skill components revealed substantial posttraining improvement in all behaviors targeted. Additionally, treatment effects generalized to novel role-play scenes and to unstructured conversations with familiar and unfamiliar adults. Training effects did not appear to transfer to conversations with unfamiliar children, however. Some generalization across target behaviors was also observed. This study indicates the usefulness of social skills training with an outpatient population of children, and provides new evidence concerning the range of setting and individuals to which skill improvements may naturally generalize.