Overview of Reviews of Peer-mediated Interventions for Young Children With Disabilities

Abstract

In peer-mediated interventions, nondisabled peers are systematically taught to engage children with disabilities in positive social interactions, with the aim of helping the latter acquire new, targeted social skills. Peer-mediated interventions have been used to enhance the social and play skills of young children with disabilities for many years and continue to be commonly employed with these children in classroom settings. Because of the frequency of use, it is important to know the level of empirical support for this instructional practice. Our objective for the overview reported here was to evaluate systematic reviews of peer-mediated interventions for young children under the age of 5 years with or at risk for disabilities. We conducted an overview of reviews, a method used for evaluating existing research reviews. We searched electronic databases and other sources for published articles presenting the results of reviews of studies on peer-mediated interventions meeting our criteria. We then synthesized the findings across reviews to formulate conclusions on the interventions’ effects and thus to make practice recommendations. We located 10 reviews in which 47 studies with 114 young children with a variety of developmental disabilities were discussed. In these studies, peer-mediated interventions typically occurred in natural settings such as inclusive classrooms and children’s homes. The findings from all 10 reviews suggested that peer-mediated interventions were effective for improving the social development of young children with disabilities. Over 80% of the 47 studies displayed positive findings. Three of the 10 reviews conducted a meta-analysis, and all three meta-analyses showed robust results for the peer-mediated interventions. Thus, the use of a peer-mediated intervention for children under the age of 5 with or at risk for disabilities is strongly supported by empirical research, and therefore it should be considered an evidence-based practice for young children with disabilities. Finally, peer-mediated interventions’ results were most robust when used with preschoolage children in inclusive (natural) settings.