Four young children with severe and moderate handicaps were taught to generalize play responses. Across the four participants, training to generalize within-toy sets resulted in complete between-class generalization in 11 sets, partial generalization in 3 sets, and no generalization in 2 sets. (Author/CL)

Comparison of the relative effectiveness of oral and total communication training models for teaching expressive labeling skills to three echolalic autistic children (six-nine years old) demonstrated that total communication was the most successful approach with each of the Ss. (Author/CL)

Results indicated that socially unskilled, learning disabled children (8 to 10 years old) can be taught to respond appropriately to role-play situations. However, improved performance did not generalize to the natural school setting and treatment did not affect ratings of peer acceptance. (Author)

Five children with severe educational retardation, aged 5-12, were involved in sign training in which the spoken words corresponding to signs were receptively known to participants. Whether signs were taught concurrently or in a serial fashion, signs taught by total communication were acquired faster than those taught by sign-alone training.…

Three moderately retarded students were taught to initiate and expand on conversational topics through actual conversations with nonhandicapped peers. Training generalized to natural contexts. Results were socially validated by undergraduates who rated tapes of two of the students' conversations during training phases as more socially competent…

A sibling training procedure consisting of direct prompting and modeling across three pairs of siblings revealed that direct prompting was effective for increasing reciprocal interactions between severely retarded and nonhandicapped siblings and increasing levels of initiations and responsiveness to initiations. (CL)

Six behaviorally handicapped elementary students participated in short-term resource treatment to bring their behavior under the control of a combination of treatment procedures emphasizing self-evaluation. Results indicated that students maintained appropriate classroom behavior in their regular classrooms, once self-evaluation procedures were…

A training package consisting of instruction in role-play social behaviors, reinforcement of appropriate behaviors, and a correction procedure was used with 20 children (ages 7-13) with deafness and severe language disabilities. The training package was effective in increasing greeting, turn waiting, initiating interaction, and giving help; and…

Eight high- and low-status nonhandicapped students ages 7-10 (N=8) were taught to direct social initiations to eight severely handicapped students during recess. Interactions of the high-status students resulted in higher levels of initiations by nontrained peers toward the handicapped students than did interactions of low-status students.…

A time delay procedure was used to teach three children (ages 5-9) with autism to ask the question "What's that?" when novel stimuli were presented, and generalization of the skill was assessed. Results suggest that children with autism can be taught to ask questions that lead to acquisition of new information. (Author/DB)

This study examined the effects of a cross-age peer-tutoring program on the social skills of two sixth-grade and two socially rejected and isolated kindergarten boys. Peer tutoring consisted of the older boys conducting social-skills training with their younger tutees. The frequency of positive social interactions increased for all four boys, with…

This study, involving five elementary students with severe emotional and behavioral problems, demonstrated the effectiveness of an intervention package comprising (1) observation of videotapes following peer activity sessions; (2) self-evaluation of peer interactions observed on videotapes; and (3) delayed feedback and reinforcement for desirable…

Parents of four nonverbal and four echolalic autistic children, aged five-nine, were trained to increase their children's speech by using the Natural Language Paradigm. Following training, parents increased the frequency with which they required their children to speak, and children increased the frequency of their verbalizations in three…

A study examined two strategies for increasing the accuracy with which five elementary teachers implemented a peer tutoring intervention for students with reading difficulties. Four teachers implemented the intervention at levels substantially above baseline during the performance feedback condition. Student reading comprehension scores improved…