Teaching Conversational Social Skills to Delinquent Youth

Abstract

The present study examined the effectiveness of a Positive Talk curriculum in promoting specific conversational social skills of nine female juvenile delinquents. The verbal skills included calling others by name, using manners, making positive statements about self and others, and making positive statements about the present and future. Positive Talk social skills training incorporated the components of explanation of target skills, practice of positive talk vocabulary, modeling, role playing, performance feedback, and transfer of training. Sequential application of a multiple baseline across groups design demonstrated that the training was successful in promoting the participants’ target social skills. Systematic programming of generalization facilitated the transfer of skills from the training classroom to a natural social context in the lunchroom.