SOCIAL SKILLS TRAINING FOR SOCIALLY WITHDRAWN KINDERGARTEN CHILDREN : THE MODIFICATION OF SOCIALLY ISOLATED BEHAVIOR

• Published in: Japanese Journal of Behavior Therapy Vol. 19; no. 1; pp. 1 - 12
• Main Authors: Sato, Shohji, Sato, Yoko, Takayama, Iwao
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: Japanese
• Published: Japanese Association for Behavioral and Cognitive Therapies( JABCT ) 31.03.1993
• Subjects: coaching; generalization; Social skills training; young withdrawn children
• ISSN: 0910-6529; 2424-2594
• DOI: 10.24468/jjbt.19.1_1

Three socially withdrawn kindergarten children were treated for their social skills deficits to decrease their socially isolated behavior. Target skills of treatement in this study were (a) participation in peers' group play and activity, (b) positive social initation, and (c) positive responding behaviors. Training included coaching method which had been found to be effective for aggressive children and low social status young children. As the 10 sessions of training proceeded, all subjects acquired the target skills, and use them in their free play settings (generalization situations). Moreover, in the Training Phase, the socially isolated behavior, which had appeared frequentlly in the Baseline Phase, were sharply decreased and the coopelative and pararell plays increased for all subjects. In the post-training assessment session, the oldest child actively participated in cooperative play with peer and used the trained skills. However, two younger children discontinued to use their acquired social skills in the free play setting. According to teachr's ratings on social skills, scores of three subjects were higher on thh post-training than on the baseline assessments. This suggested that the teachers percieved the positive change in subject's social skills as a result of the coching. The effectiveness of social skills training with coaching method for socially withdrawn kinderganten children and the generalizability of this training were discussed.