Teaching Social Skills in

an Authentic

Environment

Rebecca Hartzell, Candace Gann, and Carl Liaupsin

University of Arizona

The problem

Inclusion

Proximity

IEP social minutes

Social skills interventions

(Bauminger et al., 2003; Hauck et al., 2005; Taylor, 2004)

Three parts

Natural setting

Direct instruction

Prompting

(Ault & Griffen, 2013; Craig-Unkefer et al., 2002; Demchak, 1990; Humphreys et al., 2013; Strain et al., 1979)

The purpose

Effects, generalization and maintenance of intervention employing brief social lessons with a prompting/fading procedure for social engagement in the natural, integrated lunchroom setting for three elementary age students with developmental disabilities

Single Subject Research Design

Methods

Participant: Mary

8 years old

Down Syndrome

Avoid social interactions

Aggressive social behaviors

Speech difficulty

Standard score of 79 on SSRS social skills subscale

Participant: Chantelle

7 years old

Process of evaluation for ASD

Avoided contact with peers

Limited social contact

Low audibility

Standard score of 67 on SSRS social skills subscale

Participant: Beatrice

7 years old

ASD

Often attempted to socialize

Often aggressive

Wanderer

Standard score of 64 on SSRS social skills subscale

Setting

Behavioral Definitions

Target behavior: Social engagement

Verbal interaction or active listening with peers utilizing eye contact, body language, and tone of voice.

Measured: Verbalizations

Audible, on-topic ‘talking’ within conversational turn

Design and Data Collection

Multiple baseline design

Functionally irreversible intervention

Phases

Baseline, intervention, and maintenance

Generalization

Data collection

20 minute sessions

15-second momentary time sampling for social engagement

Event recording for verbalizations (prompted vs. unprompted)

Reliability

IOA: Social Engagement

32% of sessions

95.6% agreement

IOA: Verbalizations

25% of sessions

96.5% agreement

IOA: Generalization

27% of sessions

98.6% agreement

IOA: Treatment Integrity

32% of sessions

97% agreement

Control Group

Goal level for participants

Thirty Control Participants

Randomly selected from among peers attending same lunch period

15-second momentary time sampling for 20 minute sessions

IOA: 33% of sessions, 97% agreement

Social engagement data averaged 44% of intervals (range = 7 – 70%)

Procedures

The “How to”

Session 1

Introduction to intervention

Feelings about socializing

Overview of expectations

“Friend Paper”

Sessions 2-5

Brief lessons on eye contact, body language, audibility, and subject topics

Use visual examples

Bad and good examples

Have student identify which examples were “good/bad”

Challenge

Friend Paper

Subsequent Sessions

Focus on all elements of engaging with peers (eye contact, body language, audibility, and topic choice)

Quiz students on different elements during transition period to lunch

Prompting

Prompting would occur every minute

Eye contact

Face peer

Use audible voice

Prompt something germane to subject in discussion

OR use conversation starter if student is not communicating

Reinforcement

Typically developing peer places sticker on “Friend Paper”

Motivate typically developing peers to be patient with peers with social needs

First Fade

50% social engagement over 4 sessions

Prompt faded to every 2 minutes

Participant stops receiving a sticker for communicating with peer

Student receiving intervention was able to give typically developing peers a sticker for being a good friend

Additional Fading

Second Fade

50% social engagement over 4 sessions

Prompt faded to every 4 minutes

Final Fade

50% social engagement over 4 sessions

End prompting

Maintenance

Three months after intervention conclusion

Sustainability of efficacy after prolonged periods of no prompting in social setting

It worked!

Results

M C B

Baseline

Avg. 1% 2% 1%

Rng. 0-2% 0-7% 0-3%

Intervention

Avg 62% 73% 36%

Rng. 20-93%

50-97%

17-72%

TI 98% 98% 98%

Fading

P 2m 70% 81% NA

P 4m NA 66% NA

P -- NA 69% NA

Maintenance

Avg. 47% 50% 25%

Rng. 30-68%

40-62%

16-37%

Social Engagement

86 88 123 125 127

M C B

Baseline

Avg. 1% 1% 3%

Rng. 0-3% 0-3% 0-8%

Intervention

Avg 26% 51% 15%

Rng. 0-58% 3-100%

0-38%

Maintenance

Avg. 55% NA 44%

Rng. 30-75%

NA 33-58%

Generalization

124 126

Mary Chantelle Beatrice0

2

4

6

8

10

12

14

16

18

Baseline Prompted Unprompted

Avera

ge N

um

ber

of

Verb

alizati

ons

Verbalizations

M C B

Baseline

Avg. 0 1 0

Rng. 0-1 0-4 0-1

Intervention

P. Avg. 6 4 4

P. Rng. 0-13 2-9 1-7

U. Avg. 12 16 5

U. Rng. 3-22 5-27 1-10

Bring it back full circle

Discussion

Summary

Results support the use of prompting within an integrated setting

Generalization

Maintenance

Social validity (IRP-15)

Anecdotal reports

(McIntosh & Mackay, 2008)

Extended Research

Currently no studies that combine the elements in this study

Addresses need for social skills instruction taught in social settings, despite decreased “free play” in the school (Hauck et al., 2005)

Intervention resulted in strong generalization and maintenance of skills

(Hauck et al., 2005; Sturmey, 1997; Taylor, 2004)

Limitations

Incomplete fading of prompts

Generalization control group data was not collected

Verbalization data was not taken daily

Next Step

Additional disability categories and ages

Schools with full inclusion model

Generalization to classroom setting, extra-curricular activities, etc.

Full year intervention that would allow for complete fading

References

Ault, M. J., & Griffen, A. K. (2013). Teaching with systems of least prompts: An easy method for monitoring progress. TEACHING Exceptional Children, 45(3), 46-53.

Bauminger, N., Shulman, C., & Galit, A. (2003). Peer interaction and loneliness in high functioning children with autism. Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders, 33(5), 489-507.

Craig-Unkefer, L. A., & Kaiser, A. P. (2002). Improving the social communication skills of at-risk preschool children in a play context. Topics in Early Childhood Special Education, 22, 3-13.

Demchak, M. (1990). Response prompting and fading methods: A review. American Journal on Mental Retardation, 94 (6), 603-615.

Hauck, M., Fein, D., Waterhouse, L., & Feinstein, C. (1995). Social initiations by autistic children to adults and other children. Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders, 25(6), 578-593.

Humphreys, T., Polick, A., Howk, L., Thaxton, J., & Ivancic, A. (2013). An evaluation of repeating the discriminative stimulus when using least-to-most prompting to teach intraverbal behavior to children with autism. Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis, 46(2), 534-538.

McIntosh, K., & MacKay, L. D. (2008). Enhancing generalization of social skills: Making social skills curricula effective after the lesson. Beyond Behavior, 18(1), 18-25.

Strain, P. S., Kerr, M. M., & Ragland, E. U. (1979). Effect of peer-mediated social initiations and prompting/reinforcement procedures on the social behavior of autistic children. Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders, 9(1), 41-54.

Sturmey, P. (1997). Introductory remarks: Long-term follow-up of behavioral interventions for challenging behaviors in persons with developmental disabilities. Behavioral Interventions, 12(4), 157-162.

Taylor, S. J. (2004). Caught in the continuum: A critical analysis of the principle of the least restrictive environment. Research & Practice for Person with Severe Disabilities, 29(4), 218-230.

The End

Expectations

Looking at our friends

Facing our friends when they talk

Speaking loudly enough for our friends to hear us

Talking to our friends about things they like to talk about, too

Conversation Starters

Ask your friend what they will do tonight when they get home.

Ask your friend what they did over the weekend/last night.

Ask your friend what they have in their lunch today.

Ask your friend what they are going to do in class today.