A Comparison of Peer‐initiation and Teacher‐antecedent Interventions for Promoting Reciprocal Social Interaction of Autistic Preschoolers

Abstract

We compared two procedures for improving the social interactions of three autistic children. In a peer-initiation condition, confederates were taught to initiate interaction with the autistic children. In a teacher-antecedent condition, teachers prompted the autistic children to initiate with confederates, who had been taught to reciprocate. Using an alternating treatment design, differential effects were found. The peer-initiation procedure reliably increased the social responses of the autistic children, whereas the teacher-antecedent condition increased the initiations and responses of the autistic children. In addition, longer chains of social interaction occurred during the teacher-antecedent condition.

Facilitating Transition Times With Handicapped Preschool Children: A Comparison Between Peer‐mediated and Antecedent Prompt Procedures

“…First, with regard to the peer-mediated intervention, very few studies have used either very young or handicapped children as intervention agents (Odom & Strain, 1986). Also, unlike most peer-mediated interventions (Strain, 1981), no pretraining was needed in our study for the peer confederates.…”

Effects of Peer-Mediated Instruction to Teach Use of Speech-Generating Devices to Students with Autism in Social Game Routines

“…Strain and his colleagues conducted numerous studies involving peer coaching to produce gains in the social behavior of children with ASD who were able to speak (e.g., Odom & Strain, 1986;Strain, Kerr, & Ragland, 1979;Strain, Shores, & Timm, 1977). More recently, Thiemann and Goldstein (2004) taught peers with typical development to increase social communication in five school-age children with ASD.…”

Classwide Peer Tutoring: An Integration Strategy to Improve Reading Skills and Promote Peer Interactions Among Students With Autism and General Education Peers

“…Others have demonstrated the effectiveness of peer-and teacherdirected training to increase social skills of students with autism as well as to improve peer acceptance (see Odom, McConnell, & McEvoy, 1992;Shores, 1987;Simpson, Smith-Myles, Sasso, & Kamps, 1991, for reviews). Procedures include (a) the use of multiple peer exemplars (Fox, Shores, Lindeman, & Strain, 1986); (b) peer initiation, prompting, and reinforcement strategies (Goldstein, Kaczmarek, Pennington, & Shafer, 1992;Knapczyk, 1989;Odom, Chandler, Ostrosky, McConnell, & Reaney, 1992;Odom & Strain, 1986;Sasso, Hughes, Swanson, & Novak, 1987;Shafer, Egel, & Neef, 1984); and (c) group social games and affection activities (Brown, Ragland, & Fox, 1988;McEvoy, Twardosz, & Bishop, 1990).…”