Behavior Disordered Children's Social Skills:

Four behaviorally disordered boys from an elementary school special education classroom received social skills training. They were selected on the basis of high negative nominations on the Class Pay sociometric measure. Training was designed to increase the rate at which the boys emitted prosocial behaviors toward their peers. Verbal instructions, modeling, role-play, and feedback were used to coach positive social behaviors in eight individual sessions with each boy. In a multiple baseline design across subjects, each of the target children showed an increase in positive behavior concurrent with training. A decrease in the occurrence of positive behavior followed termination of training, however, resulting in a final level of positive behavior intermediate between baseline and training levels. The expected increases in positive responses by peers did not occur, and the measure of sociometric status was not consistently sensitive to the observed behavioral change. Unique problems of social skills training in the special education classroom are discussed.