Ian James Nutkis

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Peer-Mediated Strategies

• Ian James Nutkis
• Summer 2008
• Caldwell College

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Agenda

• Brief Description of Research
• Identification of Sources
• Components of Teaching Strategies
• References

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Conducting My Search

• Psych INFO
• EBSCO
• Key words for search
• PEER MEDIATED STRATEGIES
• PEERS
• SIBLINGS
• PEER MODELS

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What are Peer Mediating Strategies

• The use of social competent peers to model and
  reinforce appropriate social behavior
• Promote Peer efforts by arranging environments
  to provide optimal interaction and responding
• Teach typical peers to reinforce target
  behaviors
• Teach peers how to initiate social interactions
• Provide training for children with Autism on how
  to socialize with peers
• Social Skills ability to relate to others in a
  reciprocally reinforcing manner and the ability
  to generalize to new social interactions
• (Schopler Mesibov, 1986)

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Why Focus so Much on Socialization with Peers

• Without appropriate social skills children will
  be more likely to engage in problems behavior
• As the child becomes older and life calls for
  more socialization an increase in anti-social
  behavior may increase
• A limited opportunity to learn how to behave
  appropriately from peer modeling
• (Kennedy Shukla, 1995 Pollard, 1998 Scott,
  Clark, Brady, 2000)

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Explanation of Deficit

• Spontaneity / Flexibility
• The inability to observe peers and concentrate on
  the correct context of the social interaction
  leads the child to behave inappropriately in
  these situations
• Children with Autism may want to interact however
  without the proper skills it may appear that they
  do not because their initiations and responses
  are inappropriate
• (Scott et al., 2000).

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Teaching Strategies for Children with Autism

• Previous teaching strategies were conducted
  through adult-mediated approaches.
• Rogers (2000) explained that when teaching
  social skills a problem of generalization with
  peers has resulted in inappropriate use of the
  acquired skills
• Bandura (1977) Contests that social interactions
  with peers results in appropriate future novel
  interactions as the child matures

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Peer-Mediated Strategies

• Based on research, inclusion of Special
  Education students in the General Education
  setting has become the new focus treatments for
  children with Autism
• Pierce Schreibman, 1997b conducted a study
  where they recorded interactions between general
  education students and peers who were diagnosed
  with Autism and found a limited interaction
  between the two groups
• Banduras Explanation
• Inability to model peers in their environment
  correctly
• Focus on incorrect stimuli
• Modeling incorrect behavior or not modeling at
  all
• Retention of information
• Lack of reinforcement

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Interesting concepts in why peers do not interact
with children on the Spectrum

• Self-Fulfilling Prophecy Expectations become
  reality
• Affect/Effort Theory Based on how the peer
  perceives the childs physical invitation to
  interact will result in how much effort they make
  to initiate an interaction and maintain
  socializing for that interaction and in the
  future
• (Darley Oleson, 1993).
• An issue has been the length of interactions with
  peers. Most kids will initiate to make parents,
  teachers happy however the interaction may be
  superficial and brief
• Altering expectation through intervention may
  very difficult however is paramount in the
  success of the intervention

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Types of Peer-Mediated Strategies

• Altering Peer Expectations
• Peer Tutoring
• Peer buddy
• Integrated play groups
• Group-oriented Contingencies

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Types of Peer-Mediated Strategies

• Increasing Peer Effort
• Teaching initiations and how to reinforce the
  child with Autism
• Peer networks
• PRT

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Peer Tutoring/ Buddy

• Focus on Dyad of 1-to-1 peer
• The goal is for the child with Autism to model
  the typical peer in areas of
• Language
• Play Skills
• Appropriate Behavior
• Laushey and Heflin (2000) Demonstrated the
  effectiveness of this method
• Peer Tutoring used with higher-functioning
  children to teach academic skills (Kamps et al.
  1999)

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Integrated Play Groups

• Adult sets the occasion for interaction through a
  game or academic instruction
• The key is to have the activity or game
  facilitate the interactions it should not require
  the staff to prompt the children
• Key Components
• Schedule/Routine
• Small groups
• Tasks on level of child
• Only adult interaction when new skill needs to
  reinforced

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Integrated Play Groups

• Roeyers 1996 conducted a study using 85 children
  aged 5-13 in Belgium using two groups
• Experimental and Control group
• Peers informed about Autism
• Results showed an increase in
• Time spent interacting
• Increase in responding
• Increased social initiations
• Decrease in Stereotypy

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Group-Oriented Contingency

• All children engage in specific target behavior
  to obtain a common reinforcer
• Goal is to have the children engage in behavior
  without specific training.
• This technique is good for larger groups
• Kohler et al., 1995 Fefbvre Strain, 1989
  demonstrated an increase in social interactions
  to 4 to 6 year-old children
• Components Play organization, share offers and
  requests and assistance offers and requests
• An increase from 28 to 65 of social
  interactions

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Teaching Peers Social Skills Strategies

• Goal The more effort the peer makes the more
  likely the child with Autism will want to engage
  in social interactions
• The more comfortable the peer is with interacting
  the more effort they will put in and see the
  interaction as reinforcing rather than aversive
• (Disalvo et al., 2002)

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Initiation Training for Peers

• Provide peers with information pertaining to ABA
• Easy instruction
• Prompting/reinforcement/extinction protocols
• Skills were broken down into parts and taught in
  isolation
• Greetings/initiation of play/conversation
  strategies/imitation and direction
  following/sharing/turn taking/requesting help and
  other items
• Peers compliment their classmates and how to use
  emotions and affect to increase interactions
• (Disalvo et al., 2002)

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Peer Networks

• Focuses on providing support through educating
  peers on the disability of focus
• An increase in interest in the peer would
  facilitate more interactions
• Garrison-Harrell et al., (1997) incorporated a
  multiple baseline design which has the
  experimental group learn about the children with
  disabilities
• Peers taught how to use augmentative
  communication systems, social skills training
  that focused on simple conversations
• With exposure and education about their peers
  typical developing peers recorded more acceptance
  and an increase in interacting

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Pivotal Response Training

• Pierce and Schreibman (1995, 1997a, 1997b) used
  role-play techniques to teach peers how to
  deliver reinforcement
• Reinforcement consisted of..
• paying attention
• sharing
• variety of toys and activities
• modeling appropriate behavior
• encouraging language
• variety of responses
• This is conducted in the Natural Environment
  based on the targets preference for activity

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Conceptual Analysis 4-Term Contingency

• Higher order conditional stimuli
• Discriminative Stimuli/Motivating Operations
• Response
• Consequence

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Social Skills in a classroom using Peer Buddy

• Its time for lunch in a 3rd grade inclusion
  classroom
• Peer buddy checks activity schedule and packs
  up books, Child is hungry at this time Child on
  the spectrum checks activity schedule and packs
  up books and says.
• Do you want to go to the cafeteria with me
• Peer buddy responds YES and begins to
  initiate a conversation based on scripted
  topic that pertains to the days activities
  Attention from peer and social reinforcement
  given as a result of response

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Class Example using 4-Term Contingency

• Higher Order Conditioned Stimuli
• Discriminative Stimuli/MO
• Response
• Consequence
• GOOD LUCK lt)

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Video

• http//www.youtube.com/watch?vBSyzsHx73uUampfea
  turerelated

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References

• Bandura, A. (1977). Social learning theory. New
  York Prentice Hall.
• Darley, J. M., Oleson, K. C. (1993).
  Introduction to research on interpersonal
  expectations. In P. D. Blanck (Ed.),
  Interpersonal expectations Theory, research, and
  applications. Studies in emotion and social
  interaction (pp. 45-63). New York Cambridge
  University Press.
• DiSalvo, Carla A., Oswald, Donald Pl, Focus on
  Autism and Other Develpmental Disabilities,Vol 17
  (4), Win 2002. pp. 198-207.
• Garrison-Harrell, L., Kamps, D., Kravitz, T.
  (1997). The effects of peer networks on
  social-communicative behaviors for students with
  autism. Focus on Autism and Other Developmental
  Disabilities, 12, 241-254.
• Kamps, D. M., Dugan, E., Potucek, J., Collins,
  A. (1999). Effects of cross-age peer tutoring
  networks among students with autism and general
  education students. Journal of Behavioral
  Education, 9, 97-115.
• Kennedy, C. H., Shukla, S. (1995). Social
  interaction research for people with autism as a
  set of past, current, and emerging propositions.
  Behavioral Disorders, 21, 21-35.
• Kohler, F. W., Strain, P. S., Hoyson, M., Davis,
  L., Donna, W. M., Rapp, N. (1995). Using
  group-oriented contingency to increase social
  interactions between children with autism and
  their peers A preliminary analysis of corollary
  supportive behaviors. Behavior Modification, 19,
  10-32.
• Laushey, K. M., Heflin, L. J. (2000). Enhancing
  social skills of kindergarten children with
  autism through the training of multiple peers as
  tutors. Journal of Autism and Related Disorders,
  30, 183-193.
• Pierce, K., Schreibman, L. (1997a). Multiple
  peer use of pivotal response training social
  behaviors of classmates with autism Results from
  trained and untrained peers. Journal of Applied
  Behavior Analysis, 30, 157-160.
• Pierce, K., Schreibman, L. (1997b). Using peer
  trainers to promote social behavior in autism
  Are they effective at enhancing multiple social
  modalities? Focus on Autism and Other
  Developmental Disabilities, 12, 207-218.
• Roeyers, H. (1996). The influence of
  non-handicapped peers on the social interactions
  of children with a pervasive developmental
  disorder. Journal of Autism and Developmental
  Disorders, 26, 303-320.
• Rogers, S. J. (2000). Interventions that
  facilitate socialization in children with autism.
  Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders,
  30, 399-409.
• Schopler, E., Mesibov, G. B. (Eds.). (1986).
  Social behavior in autism. New York Plenum
  Press.
• Scott, J., Clark, C., Brady, M. (2000).
  Students with autism Characteristics and
  instruction programming. San Diego, CA Singular.