Behavior Analysis's Procedure to Improve Social Interactions Among Young Developmental Disabled Students and their Peers

Abstract

Social interaction has been considered a great problem regarding people who have disabilities. Research for developing procedures to ensure social interactions has been considered important by behavior analysts. This work aims to assess a procedure to increase and develop better social interactions among young developmental disabled students and their peers. First it was carried out by the researchers an initial evaluation of social interactions performed by students on gym classes. After this phase, the couch was trained by researchers how to deal with students through meetings before classes and feedback right before and after classes. The couch was trained to lead all his students to play one of the different games and to increase the occurrences of social interaction with their peers. A final phase was taken without any instruction to gym teacher so that it could be evaluated if teacher’s behaviors toward improving social interactions of his students were maintained. The results suggested that the procedure had been successful to increase amount and improve quality of social interactions among students.

Keywords

• behavior analysis
• social interaction
• teacher instruction
• school settings
• development disabilities