Guidelines for Integrating Young Children with Visual Impairments in General Educational Settings

To achieve success in educating visually impaired children in general educational settings, best-practice initiatives should be established before implementation occurs. This article examines the literature on early childhood special education and education of children with visual impairments to suggest practical guidelines for integrating youngsters who are blind or visually impaired with their age-appropriate peers.

Using Badges to Increase Initiations of Children with Severe Disabilities in a Play Setting

A study was conducted to investigate a training strategy that allowed children with severe disabilities to choose and initiate activities when playing with chronologically age-appropriate peers without disabilities. Prior to intervention, each student with severe disabilities was taught to use badges with photographs to indicate play activities. Pretraining involved role-playing with the teacher, teacher assistant, and a fourth grader without disabilities and not otherwise involved in the study. The intervention involved having students with disabilities take their badges into a free-play situation. A multiple-baseline, across-subjects design indicated a functional relationship between intervention and student use of play organizers, initiations, and shares. Results are discussed in terms of including students with severe disabilities in the training process when teaching social and play skills.

The Effect of Social Skill Training on the Peer Interaction of Preschool Hearing-Impaired Children

The following study evaluated the effectiveness of a social skills intervention program for preschool hearing-impaired children. A combined multiple baseline-reversal design was used across two groups of three children. Activities were designed that created opportunities for practicing social skills accompanied by instructor modeling and prompting and data on positive and negative interaction were obtained during instructor-directed activities and free play probes. Results showed that (a) positive peer interaction increased for both groups of children, (b) sharing increased more than conversation, (c) positive interaction generalized to the free play setting while the intervention was in effect, and (d) positive interaction decreased when the intervention ceased. The relationship between linguistic competence and social interactions is discussed, and suggestions are made for future research.

Providing Services to Preschool-aged Children

The importance of the early childhood years in a child's growth and development cannot be overemphasized. During these years growth is rapid and the foundations for later sensory, motor, cognitive, physical, language and social-emotional development are laid. Some of our most prominent and respected scientists, theoreticians and scholars have emphasized these critical early years (Bloom, 1964; Bronfenbrenner, 1975; Bruner, 1969; Hunt, 1961; White, 1975) and evidence gathered during the last thirty years supports their early work.

Evaluation of a social interaction coaching program in an integrated day-care setting

We used a multiple baseline design across teachers (with a reversal phase for 1 teacher) to evaluate the direct and indirect effects of a structured coaching procedure on the teaching behaviors of 3 day-care teachers. Structured coaching preceding daily caregiver routines resulted in (a) substantial increases in adult delivery of behavioral support of social interaction during group activities with 2- and 4-year-old children and (b) marked collateral increases in positive interactions of socially withdrawn children. Long-term maintenance effects were demonstrated by both the teachers and target children, and social validity measures indicated that the teachers rated coaching very positively on several dimensions. The results are discussed in relation to in-service training of day-care staff, the concept of coaching as a setting event, and the dissemination of teaching technology related to social interaction of young children.

Fading teacher prompts from peer-initiation interventions for young children with disabilities

This study examined a system for fading teacher prompts to children who served as peers in peer-initiation interventions for young children with disabilities. A teacher taught peers to direct social initiations to children with disabilities, provided verbal prompts for those initiations, and introduced a system that provided peers with visual feedback about the social interactions of the children with disabilities. She then systematically withdrew the verbal prompts to peers, and subsequently faded the visual feedback system. Peer initiations increased when the intervention began and resulted in increases in social interaction for the children with disabilities. As the teacher systematically faded the prompts and visual feedback to the peers, social interaction continued at the levels found during intervention and was maintained during a short maintenance period.

Training supervisors in a collaborative team approach to promote peer interaction of children with disabilities in integrated preschools

Three supervisors of integrated preschools were trained in a collaborative team approach to encourage resource and classroom teachers to develop strategies that promote peer interaction of all children, including children with disabilities. The focus of classroom teachers' behaviors and the interactive play of children with disabilities were measured daily in both a training (indoor play period) and a generalization (outdoor play period) setting. In a multiple baseline design, supervisors were individually trained in a collaborative team approach using a manual, modeling, and role playing; then they implemented the approach with classroom and resource teachers. We found that after supervisor training, classroom teachers increased their behaviors directed towards children with disabilities and decreased their behaviors directed towards nondisabled children. Moreover, we found a doubling of the interactive play of children with disabilities and, for two of the three classes, an increase in the interactive play of comparison children, randomly selected by the classroom teachers. Changes in both teachers' and children's behaviors were also found in the generalization setting. The implications of the results for interventions in community settings are discussed.

Effects of self-evaluation on preschool children's use of social interaction strategies with their classmates with autism

This study investigated effects of a self-evaluation procedure on preschool children's use of social interaction strategies among their classmates with autism. Three triads of children (comprised of 1 trained normally developing peer, 1 untrained peer, and 1 child with autism) participated. A multiple baseline design across subjects was used to demonstrate that peers who were taught facilitative strategies increased their use of strategies only after the self-evaluation intervention was introduced. Improvements in social behavior of children with autism was associated with peers' increased strategy use. Untrained peers demonstrated little change in their social behavior. Treatment effects were replicated when trained peers were asked to use self-evaluation with other children with autism during other play times. Self-evaluation procedures enhanced the use of social interaction strategies on the part of normally developing peers during social skills interventions.

Increasing social interactions of severely handicapped autistic children

A peer-initiation training procedure was implemented across multiple peer trainers to investigate social interactions between severely withdrawn autistic children and their nonhandicapped peers. For one subject, substantial increases in spontaneous interactions with training and nontraining peers occurred after the peer-initiation procedure was applied across two training exemplars. Spontaneous social interactions continued even after the training procedure was removed. Although experimental control was established with the second subject during training, spontaneous interactions during nontraining periods were primarily with training peers. The results contribute to an emerging data base on the social interactions of autistic and severely withdrawn handicapped children and on peer-initiation training procedures.