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Biomedical subjects

P S Strain

Publications and source records attributed to P S Strain.

7 recordsLinked to original sources
PubMed1979

Effects of peer-mediated social initiations and prompting/reinforcement procedures on the social behavior of autistic children.

Peer-mediated social initiations and prompting/reinforcement procedures were evaluated (in training and generalization sessions) as interventions for increasing the positive social behavior of four autistic children. During baseline, the peer trainer made few social initiations and did not prompt or socially reinforce subjects. For two subjects, baseline was followed by social initiation intervention, and for the other two, baseline was followed by prompting and social reinforcement. Both interventions produced dramatic and comparable increases in positive social behavior in training sessions. Post-treatment responding was not observed for either intervention. When interventions terminated in a second baseline period, the subjects' behavior returned to the level observed during the initial baseline. The subjects were then exposed to the intervention procedure they had not yet experienced. Again, there were positive and comparable behavior changes in the treatment setting, but no increase in positive social behavior was observed during generalization assessment.

Autistic Disorder↗
PubMed1979

Additional comments on multiple-baseline designs in instructional research.

A number of measurement and design issues that are critical to the use of multiple-baseline procedures in evaluating instructional interventions were highlighted. First, issues related to the interaction between length of baseline assessment and the following outcomes were presented: (a) deceleration in behavior across baseline, (b) prediction of behavior change, (c) error analyses performance on instructional stimuli, and (d) reactivity of observation. Finally, an attempt was made to match the variety of multiple-baseline designs to specific questions often asked by instructional researchers.

Conflict, Psychological↗
PubMed1977

An experimental analysis of peer social initiations on the behavior of withdrawn preschool children: some training and generalization effects.

In this study, positive social initiations by an age-peer was evaluated as an intervention for isolate preschool children in training and generalization sessions. During baseline, the confederate made few social approaches to the target subjects. The confederate greatly increased his rate of positive social initiations during the first intervention, decreased social approaches during a second baseline, and increased social approaches again in a second intervention phase. Increases in confederate initiations resulted in an immediate acceleration in the frequency of subjects' positive social behavior during training sessions. Additionally, for two of the three subjects, positive social behaviors were also observed to increase during generalization sessions. The results suggest that (a) peers may be trained successfully to set the occasion for positive social behaviors by withdrawn classmates, (b) increased social responding by withdrawn children in the presence of frequent peer social initiations may also generalize beyond the training setting, and (c) the magnitude of direct and generalization effects appears to be related to the entry-level repertoire of target children.

Behavior Therapy↗
PubMed1975

The social play of two behaviorally disordered preschool children during four activities. A multiple baseline study.

The effect of contingent teacher attention on the social play of two behaviorally disordered preschool children was investigated. Using a multiple baseline design with reversal conditions, social play was measured on four activities: pegs and pegboard, athletic ball, blocks, and water pail. Baseline data indicated considerable variability in the amount of social play across the four activities. The initiation of the experimental contingency produced a dramatic increase in percentage of time in which the subjects engaged in social play. The implications of these results for the remediation of isolate behavior in young children with multiple behavioral deficits are discussed.

Attention↗