Effects of Teaching a Problem-Solving Strategy on Preschool Children with Problem Behavior

Abstract

This study was conducted to determine whether a problem-solving strategy would affect children's alternative solutions to social interaction conflicts and to assess whether this skill would generalize to typical preschool settings. An A-B single-subject design was replicated four times with four preschool children who exhibited aggressive methods for resolving social interaction conflicts. A nontreatment group was added for comparison. Children's stories provided the context for teaching the strategy. Individual probe sessions measured the effect of the strategy on the types of solutions that children generated. The treatment group's frequency of aggressive responses decreased, and a corresponding increase in prosocial responses was observed during individual probes. The treatment group's rates of aggressive behaviors also decreased in typical play activities. In contrast, the nontreatment group's solutions showed little or no change in prosocial or aggressive solutions. The implication is that children's aggressive behaviors are affected when a context for problem-solving is paired with the problem-solving strategy.