Hey there behaviorists!
Listen below to the new episode of JABA in one take. This is the series where we break down a paper from JABA so that you, the research-focused practitioner can keep up with current research literature.
When teaching social skills, the practitioner will likely run into many barriers. At least, when I teach and target these skills, I run into barriers. McKeown and colleagues guide us down a semi-structured pathway, and more importantly, a thought process for teaching these skills. Each individual social skill may need individualized interventions, which are of course individualized by the child. Therefore, a heavily systematic and chaotically busy approach was taken, where the researchers attempted and showed experimental control brilliantly over a wide range of intervention components. In a journal of clean and pretty research, it is nice to see some messy graphs to let us clinicians know that it is ok to improvise (systematically) a little bit!
Listen down below, and respond/tweet me with your opinions! Remember to always form your own, educated opinions on these topics, and to always read (and listen) broadly!
Article read:
McKeown, C. A., Luczynski, K. C., and Lehardy, R. K. (2021). Evaluating the generality and social acceptability of early friendship skills. Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis, 54(4), 1341-1368. https://doi.org/10.1002/jaba.842
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1. Subscribe and respond to this email newsletter!
2. Join my twitter page, @behavioristBC and tweet me your thoughts!
Additional Readings
Hanley, G. P., Heal, N. A., Tiger, J. H., & Ingvarsson, E. T. (2007). Evaluation of a classwide teaching program for developing preschool life skills. Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis, 40(2), 277-300. https://doi.org/10.1901/jaba.2007.57-06
Tremblay, A., Strain, P. S., Hendrickson, J. M., & Shores, R. E. (1981). Social interactions of normal preschool children: Using normative data for subject and target behavior selection. Behavior Modification, 5(2), 237-253. https://doi.org/10.1177/ 014544558152006
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