Abstract:
Social impairment is a common challenge for people with developmental disabilities that has far reaching consequences throughout the lifespan, limiting their success in school, friendships, employment, and overall independence and inclusion (Church, Alisanski, & Amanullah, 2000; Howlin, Goode, Hutton, & Rutter, 2004). For such a critical and impactful issue, little has been done in the research field to identify the best possible interventions to not just address the need for social skills, but to teach them efficiently while producing the most socially valuable changes that will extend across settings, people, and types of interactions. Social Skills Training (SST) is a structured, multicomponent behavioural intervention that has been successfully implemented by researchers in a number of conditions and using a variety of techniques. The components in SST include instruction, modelling, role play, feedback, and reinforcement. However, little is known regarding the effectiveness of the individual components and the best ways to implement them. The present study focuses on the use of adults vs. peers as models in the modelling component of SST, and seeks to answer the following questions. Which modelling method is more efficient? Which modelling method promotes better target skill performance in natural contexts? As a secondary question, will the participants use the target skills differently with adults vs peers in the natural context? In an alternating treatments design, two children diagnosed with autism received training for two social skills each, in which one skill was taught with adult models in SST and the other skill was taught with peer models. Their skill performance was recorded during training sessions as well as free play. For both children, although the adult modelling condition proved to be more efficient in the training sessions, the peer modelling condition appeared to be more effective in producing skill use during free play. The implications and limitations of these findings are discussed. Recommendations are given for future research to focus on the role of peers in SST and ways of improving the training efficiency of peer models in order to develop an intervention for social skills that is both efficient and socially valuable.