Facilitating Peer-Group Entry in Kindergartners With Impairments in Social Communication

Abstract

Purpose: This series of case studies examined the efficacy of intervention designed to teach peer-group entry skills to kindergartners with social interaction and communication deficits. Method: The participants were 3 kindergartners at the University of Washington Experimental Educational Unit (EEU) who were selected because of difficulty with peer-group entry and cooperative play as compared to other children in the classroom. The intervention program included direct treatment of the children by the primary researcher and teachers in the classroom. The intervention was modeled on research describing a sequential peer-entry hierarchy that incorporated the children moving from low-risk strategies to high-risk strategies. Specifically, the treatment focused on teaching the children to use props to facilitate the production of high-risk verbal statements. Results: Results demonstrated increases in (a) children’s use of props and verbal statements to enter peer groups, (b) cooperative play, and (c) time spent interacting with peers. Results also indicated that following treatment, the children’s behaviors more closely resembled those of their comparison peers. Clinical Implications: Results are encouraging for suggesting strategies for working with kindergartners who exhibit social communication interaction problems. The data indicate that a combined speech-language pathologist/teacher intervention using modeling and prompting with visual stimuli may be successful in teaching children to use props and specific verbal statements as a means of entering peer groups and engaging in cooperative play.