CALIFORNIA STATE UNIVERSITY, NORTHRIDGE
THE ACQUISITION OF SOCIAL INTERACTION BEHAVIORS BY
DEVELOPMENTALLY DELAYED YOUNG CHILDREN AND THE
GENERALIZATION OF THOSE SKILLS TO THE HOME ENVIRONMENT
A thesis submitted in partial satisfaction of the
requirements for the degree of
Master of Arts in Education,
Early Childhood/Special Education
by
Junko June Hada
Nay 1986
The Thesis of Junko June Wada is approved:
Dr. Ann R. Bisno
D . Rose M. Bromwich, Chair
California State University, Northridge
ii
DEDICATION
To the memory of my brother, Osamu,
whose strength served as an inspiration
to those of us who shared in his life.
To my mother, my very first teacher,
who gives me love and friendship.
To all the "special" children and their parents,
who continue to show me what caring
and commitment can do.
iii
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I am especially grateful to Dr. Rose M. Bromwich,
who spent many hours reading, discussing, and improving
the many drafts of this paper.
I
owe a special thanks for
her support, patience, and exemplary editorial skills.
She has been, and continues to be, the source of much
knowledge, inspiration, and encouragement.
My thanks also to Dr. Ann Bisno and Dr. Lynne Cook
for generously taking time from their busy schedules to
read and respond to this paper.
iv
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Page
Dedication . . .
iii
Acknowledgements
iv
List of Figures
ix
ABSTRACT • . . . .
X
CHAPTER ONE - INTRODUCTION .
1
The Developmentally Delayed Child .
Social Skills . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Child Development - Models and Concepts
Social Development . . ~
Interaction . . . . . . . . . .
Current Curriculum Focus . . .
CHAPTER T\-JO - REVIEW AND DISCUSSION
OF THEORY AND RESEARCH . . . . . . .
Social Skills and Learning Theory .
Social Learning Theory
. . . .
Transfer of Learning . . . . . .
Caregiving Relationship . . . . . . . .
CHAPTER THREE - SOCIAL SKILL ACQUISITION
Basic Principles of Program .
Principle
Principle
Principle
Principle
Principle
Principle
Principle
Principle
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. . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . .
. . . . .
. . .
. . . . . . . . .
. . .
.
v
5
8
9
11
13
17
20
20
24
31
35
46
46
46
47
48
49
so
so
51
52
Page
CHAPTER THREE (continued)
Skill Progression . .
Level I:
53
Awareness
Definition
. . .
of
Level I Behavior ..
Caregiver Role
. . .
Jeffrey, an Example of a
Child Functioning at
Level I • . . . . . . .
55
55
Ch~racteristics
Level II:
55
56
57
Imitation . .
59
Definition . . . .
Characteristics of
Level II Behaviors
Caregiver Role . . .
Tommy, an Example of a
Child Functioning at
Level II . . . . . . .
59
60
60
60
Self-Initiation
62
Definition . . . . .
Characteristics of
Level III Behavior
Caregiver Role . . .
Adam, an Example of a
Child Functioning at
Level III . . . . .
62
Level III:
Level IV:
62
63
63
Skill Expansion .
65
Definition . . . . . . .
Characteristics of
Level IV Behavior
Caregiver Role
Tobey, an Example of a
Child Functioning at
Level IV . . . . . . . . .
65
vi
65
65
66
Page
CHAPTER THREE (continued)
Level V:
Critical Judgment .
Definition . . . . .
Characteristics of
Level V Behavior
Caregiver Role . . .
Eric, an Example of a
Child Functioning at
Level V . . . . . .
Effective Techniques in Working
with Children . . . . . . . . .
68
68
68
68
68
70
Communication Techniques . . .
Structure . . . . . . . .
Teacher Control . . . . . . . . . .
Redirection and Reflection
71
INVOLVE~1ENT
82
CHAPTER FOUR - PARENT
.
Types of Parent Participation
Ongoing Communication and
Parent Conferences
. . . .
2. Parent Meetings . . . . . .
3. Parent Observation
4. Parent Training . . . . . . . .
5. Home Visits . . .
77
78
79
82
1.
Implementing Programs for
Parent Involvement . .
Level I:
Awareness .
Overall Goal .
Strategies . . . . . . .
Special Skills/Sensitivities .
Level II:
Imitation
Overall Goal . .
. . . .
Strategies . . . . . . . . . .
Special Skills/Sensitivities .
vii
83
83
84
85
87
87
89
89
89
89
92
92
93
93
Page
CHAPTER FOUR (continued)
Level III:
Self-Imitation . .
Overall Goal . . . . . . . .
Strategies
. . . . . . . . .
Special Skills/Sensitivities
Level IV:
Skill Expansion . .
Overall Goal
. . . . . .
Strategies . . . . . . . . .
Special Skills/Sensitivities
Level V:
Critical Judgment
Overall Goal . . . . . .
Strategies . • . . . . . . .
Special Skills/Sensitivities
Case Examples .
96
96
96
96
98
98
98
98
102
102
103
103
105
Joey B.
. . . . ...
Jeffrey L. • • . . . .
105
111
121
CHAPTER FIVE - SUMMARY .
Focus on Social Interaction Behaviors .
Research and Theory . . . .
. . .
Social Skill Acquisition . . . . . . .
Parent Involvement . . . . . . . . . .
121
122
123
124
CHAPTER SIX - IHPLICATIONS AND SUGGESTIONS
FOR SPECIAL EDUCATORS
. . . . . . . .
126
FOOTNOTES
133
BIBLIOGRAPHY
134
viii
LIST OF FIGURES
Page
Figure 1.
Social Skills Progression:
Characteristics of Adult
Child Interactions . . . .
ix
4
ABSTRACT
THE ACQUISITION OF SOCIAL INTERACTION BEHAVIORS BY
DEVELOPMENTALLY DELAYED YOUNG CHILDREN AND THE
GENERALIZATION OF THOSE SKILLS TO THE HOHE ENVIRONMENT
by
Junko June Hada
Master of Arts in Education,
Early Childhood/Special Education
The purpose of this paper is to provide a theoretical
framework for the acquisition of social interaction skills
by young developmentally. disabled children and to describe
a means by which these behaviors can be generalized to the
child's natural home environment.
addressed in this paper:
Two questions are
1) Can the natural progression
of social skills be identified to enhance the adult's
understanding of the process of social interaction?
2)
How can the special education teacher help to facilitate
the acquisition of social skills and their generalization
to the home environment?
The issues involved in answering these questions are
identified.
Background information relating to the
X
teaching of social skills as part of the special education
program is then presented, followed by a review of relevant
research on child development, social learning theory,
and caregiver-child interactions.
A set of principles that constitutes the theoretical
foundation of the program are stated.
These principles
introduce the central section of the paper:
mental progression of social skills.
a develop-
This section is
followed by a discussion of effective management techniques
used in working with children at the various developmental
levelso
Lastly, ideas for working with parents to encour-
age the generalization of learned social skills are
introduced.
The paper concludes with implications and
suggestions for special educators faced with the task of
teaching social skills to young developmentally delayed
children.
xi
CHAPTER ONE
INTRODUCTION
In contemporary Western society, the pace of life is
fast and complex.
Rules change according to the system
within which we are operating at the time.
All too often
we are compelled to function in two or more systems
simultaneously.
dexterity.
This requires considerable social
The need for social skills and the wherewithal
to acquire these skills is no longer a simple matter.
The importance of social skills acquisition for
developmentally delayed children cannot be underestimated.
The acceptability and overall appropriateness of the
developmentally delayed child's behavior is essential for
his "survival" in the caregiving situation. 1
When a
child is able to take care of his personal needs, and when
he is responsive to his social (and personal) environment,
and when he is able to establish and maintain a positive
relationship with others, it is more probable that he will
be accepted as a valued member of his family (be it his
primary or other caregiving situation).
2
Society helps to define the behavior expectations and
standards for normal children.
There are few, if any,
available guidelines to help parents set appropriate
behavioral goals for their disabled child.
1
Society has
2
accepted the responsibility for educating developmentally
disabled children to their highest potential.
Therefore,
the schools as part of society in general must help define
the behavior expectations and standards for the disabled
child and work with parents in assisting their children
to generalize those skills learned in the school setting
to the home (natural caregiving environment).
This paper is concerned with an issue that cuts
across many handicapping conditions.
Specifically, the
questions posed here are as follows:
1) Can the study
of the acquisition and generalization of behaviors crucial
to positive, daily social interactions between the child
and his adult caregivers, enhance the understanding and
acceptance of educational curricula for developmentally
delayed children?
2) How can the special education
teacher enhance the transfer of learned social skills from
the school settting to each child's home environment?
The perspective taken is one of an early childhood/
special education student and experienced practitioner.
Therefore, some of what is written shows the perspective of
the student of developmental psychology and reflects the
observations and experiences of a special educator.
There can be no shortcut to the learning of social
skills for the delayed child.
The teacher must structure
the child's learning with the full knowledge of the
learning process of the normally developing child.
3
The major task in this paper was to develop a
theoretical framework for social skills learning and guidelines for the establishment of an effective program for
teaching social skills to young developmentally delayed
children.
A conceptualization is introduced that views
functional skills in a social learning framework -- one
that focuses on the interactive quality between child and
adult.
A progression of social skills is delineated in
some detail in Chapter Three below.
It is introduced here
in the form of a diagram (Figure 1).
The acquisition of social interaction skills is seen
as progressive and based on a developmental framework.
Five levels of development are identified:
I - awareness,
II - imitation, III - self-initiation, IV - skill building,
and V - a level of critical judgment.
The adult role and
influence in the social interaction changes as the child's
skills expand and develop, that is, going from an everpresent "arouser" at Level I to counselor at Level V.
Certain limitations are evident.
In discussing
mother-child or father-child interaction, one must keep
in mind that the interaction takes place in the social
matrix of the family of which mother (father) and child
are only one unit.
Although the individual child should
not be viewed in isolation -- but must be seen in the
context of the family -- it was necessary to discuss only
Figure 1.
LEVELS
Social Skills Progression:
I
Characteristics of Adult
II
III
Child Interactions
IV
v
SelfInitiation
Skill
Critical
Expans iq_n _______ J~dgment
Adult
initiate
interaction
Expectation
awareness
Repeated
intentional
acts to
obtain
desired
response
Expansion of
skills for
greater
adaptation
Skill
sequence
Association
Assimilation
Appropriate
communication
directed at
response
Actions related
to
consequences
"Model"
Reinforce
attempts
Verbal
reflection
of success
Redirect
behaviors
to more
successful
outcomes
Body arid voice
''Encourager''
Predictable
point of
reference
Security of
routine
"Managerial"
role
Expand social
experiences
Sensitivity to
underlying
feelings
Supportive
response
(when things
go badly)
Awareness
Imitation
Trust
familiar
adult
Behavioral
"cues"
"Arouser"
Satisfy needs
Acceptance
Nurturer
Control of
Environment
Experiences
... simple,
familiar,
predictable
ADULT
ROLE
+='-
5
one sub-system:
the mother-child dyad.
It qhould be
remembered that this is a necessary but artificial
isolation.
Furthermore, it is important at the outset to
make it clear that this paper does not include a sequence
of specific skills constituting a curriculum to teach
social skills to young developmentally delayed children.
The Developmentally Delayed Child
The term "young developmentally delayed child"
commonly accepted as zero to eight years of age -- has
semantic, historical, and social implications.
present, however,
i~
For the
is necessary to define operationally
this and other key terms used in this paper so that discussion of the delayed child and caregiver can be placed
in the proper perspective.
First, the word "young" in "young developmentally
delayed child" calls attention to the period of life when
elements of the human repertoire emerge (e.g., recognition,
memory, socially mediated behavior, and language).
Change
during this period is dramatic and growth occurs at a
faster pace.
The term "handicapped" is generic and encompasses
many conditions including physical and sensory impairments,
and disabilities in cognitive, social/emotional, language,
and motor development.
The diversity of functional
limitations found within and between groups of handicapped
6
children is extensive.
For example, among children with
cerebral palsy, some have minor motor impairments and
others have brain lesions that are extensive and lead to
uncontrollable limbs, lack of bowel and bladder control,
and seizure disorder.
Similarly, a wide range of cognitive
abilities is found in cerebral palsy.
Some children are
severely retarded, others show mild retardation, and
still others have normal intellectual abilities.
Although children who have sensory and motor
impairments are the most visible of the young handicapped
groups, there are other children whose development has
gone awry in a less obvious way.
These are the children
with developmental delays and/or emotional disorders.
When formally tested with the use of developmental
examinations, some of these children show delay in all
areas of functioning (e.g., language, social, motor),
whereas others have deficits in only one domain such as
language.
A sizable number of developmentally delayed
children who have no physical, sensory, or neurological
signs do not have an identifiable etiology.
Given that the term "handicap" connotes such
diversity, it is not surprising that researchers studying
even a well-defined handicapped group (homogeneous in
developmental age, diagnosis) find variability in the
ways that young handicapped children are similar to and
7
different from normally developing children.
Sorting out
similarities and differences and examining if and how
each difference is tied to ongoing performance will help
us understand the long-term development of handicapped
children.
The interesting point about developmental delays
(as diagnosed by performance on a standardized test) is
that the diagnosis per se provides few clues about the
child.
For example, will further development be compro-
mised because of the delay or associated factors, or is
the delay relatively benign, being a slow motion version
of "normal development?"
One of the most obvious ways that many young
handicapped children differ
from their normally devel-
oping peers is the former's slow rate of developmental
growth.
Some children have mild delays.
Many of these
higher functioning children have an uncertain outcome.
Some will be mentally retarded, others may catch up later
and show developmental capabilities that are expected of
their chronological ages.
The children who are the focus
in this paper have more severe delays and disabilities
that are consistently evident and obvious (e.g., four to
six months change for every twelve months of actual time).
Given our present level of expertise and the possible
changes in the child's environment, it is difficult to
predict with precision the outcome for any given child
8
beyond the expectation that these children will require
assistance from their caregivers in order to function
effectively in their environment.
One of the ways to better understand the implications
of delays .is to examine the social skills displayed by
delayed children with the application of principles
derived from developmental and social learning theory.
In
effect, the strategy is to embed the individual difference
issues into a developmental framework.
Social Skills
Defining social skills has become an issue in its own
right.
Generally defined (Kelly, 1982, p. 3), "social
skills" are:
... those identifiable, learned behaviors
that individuals use in interpersonal
situations to obtain or to maintain reinforcement from their environment.
To a large extent, we are as we function, think, feel,
and behave.
Our repertoire of social skills is very much
a part of this totality.
The way that we know who we are,
at least in social terms, is by the way in which people
respond to us.
Social skills are primarily acquired through learning
observation, modeling, rehearsal, and feedback (Bandura,
1969).
Social skills are comprised of specific and
discrete verbal and nonverbal behaviors which entail
9
both effective and appropriate initiations and responses.
Timing of specific behaviors is important as well as the
reciprocity of relationships.
Furthermore, the use of
social skills in human interactions is influenced by the
characteristics and quality of the child's environment.
Attempts have been made to identify the social
skills that should be learned by young developmentally
delayed children (Doll, 1953; Cain, Levin, and Elsey,
1963; AAMD Adaptive Behavior Scale, 1969; Koontz Child
Development Program, 1974; HELP, 1979).
Methods of
instruction have been set forth for the special educator
in the form of curriculum guides and various instructional
information.
Yet the long-term effects of social skills
training and of generalization of these skills to
different settings have not been impressive.
More often
than not, education focuses on the maladaptive behavior
rather than on the teaching of more adaptive social
behavior.
Attempts need to be initiated that stress and
build on the strength and the more positive aspects of the
caregiving relationship.
Child Development - Models and Concepts
In the decades since World War II, a pervasive model
for normal and atypical development has been apparent.
The child's experience during the early years of life have
been widely regarded as a central determinant of later
10
social and intellectual functioning.
The early experience paradigm postulates a simple,
mechanistic model of development.
The effects of early
experience are seen as universally consistent among
individuals of different biological make-up, and stable
through time.
In contrast, development might be better conceptualized as a continuous process -- a cumulative series of
transactions between individuals and their environment
(Sameroff and Chandler, 1975).
This cumulative nature
of development, rather than the existence of a critical
period for the effects of early experience, renders the
early years of human life highly significant for later ·
development (Ramey and Baker-Ward, 1983).
The level of
skills and competencies that individuals attain early in
their lives affects their abilities to respond to later
situations requiring adaptations and complex behavioral
organization.
Development is continuous, and later, as
well as early experiences are deemed important (Rutter,
1972).
Because biological and social factors are
coalesced at every point in development, even before
conception, the effects of experience can never be consistent across individuals of differing biological
integrity.
One of the great lessons of the 1960s and 1970s in
11
developmental psychology is that we have learned to view
development in terms of successive adaptations and behavior reorganizations rather than as a brick-by-brick
building up of capacities.
The process of socialization,
through which the rules of conduct of a society are
learned, can be likened to the growth of a tree with an
almost infinite number of branches.
Experiences are
mediated by later experiences which reinforce the meaning
of earlier. events.
In spite of the special importance of .
the early years in the continuous epigenetic process of
human development, later experiences can also have
significant effects.
If the quality of the human
environment improves during the lifespan, the debilitating
effects of early adversity can be mitigated.
Similarly,
if the environment becomes especially, nonsupportive,
early developmental gains can be lost.
In contrast to
the view prevalent in the 1960s then, every phase of human
development is increasingly acknowledged as a "critical
period" (Ramey and Baker-Ward, 1983).
Social Development
When children come into the world, they are not
socialized.
Children are born unaware of how they are
expected to behave in the wide range of situations in
which they find themselves.
Each child is,•however, born
with certain individual response tendencies for dealing
12
with persons, objects, and events.
Host developmentally delayed children, however,
experience difficulty in social situations.
In general,
their difficulties can be linked to interrelated factors
including the limitation of social interaction' due to the
nature of their condition, their dependence on their
caregiver, and the delayed quality of their learning are
but a few.
Developmentally delayed children need to be
systematically taught social skills necessary to become
more socially competent individuals.
The social
behaviors normal children learn on their own in day-to-day
interactions are not learned by developmentally delayed
children without assistance to systematize and structure.
Early intervention programs have proven to be
fruitful in providing developmentally delayed children
with early educational opportunities, and their parents,
with guidance and support.
The task remains, however, to
describe in detail how these skills learned in the school
setting can be carried over into the home or general
caretaking community.
Until recent years, learning theory held children
to be passive in the socialization process -- simply
reacting to reward and punishment which determine the
nature of the adults they would become.
In recent years
there has been a shift in the view of the child's role in
'
tl
13
the process of socialization.
Children are viewed to be
actively involved as learners in their own course of
development.
Whereas the passive conception of the child yields
research which assumes unidirectional (adult to child)
influences, a view of the child as active rather than
only reactive, necessitates consideration of both parties
in the adult-child relationship.
Similarly, the theory
of social skills development needs to be viewed as an
interactive one.
occur in a vacuum.
Children's social development does not
It evolves through children's recipro-
cal interactions with the social environment.
A complex
set of social influences impinges on the growing child.
Interaction
In order to study interactions, it is necessary to
focus on participants as a unit.
Before one can hope to
understand, and through such understanding teach the
family and child, it is necessary to gain some insight
into the dynamics of family interaction.
Just as it has
been said that the developmentally delayed child is,
first of all, a family.
For this reason I shall review
some of the relevant recent literature on parent-child
relationship and interaction.
I shall try to point out
some of the principles of family interaction and parentchild relations, for these principles are the same whether
14
the child in the family is "normal" or "delayed."
the conditions that differ.
It is
With the delayed child, an
extra factor is introduced into the family interaction
and this factor is the manner in which the particular
exceptional condition of the child affects interactional
behavior.
In addition, it is important that we, in special
education, make a distinction between "interaction" and
"relationship" before we begin to think of ways to
enhance social skills performance in young developmentally
delayed children.
For the purpose of this p.:.per, I define "interaction"
as the specific incidents of social exchange.
"Relation-
ship," on the other hand, is defined as not only what
individuals do together, but also how they do it
the quality of interaction.
or
Two mothers who engage in a
form of childrearing behavior which is manifestly identical and is therefore counted in the same rubric in
a study, may be exposing the two children to two entirely
different phenomenological experiences.
For example,
two mothers may use bottle feeding -- one reluctantly
and with much guilt, the other spontaneously and in a
relaxed manner.
One may hold, cuddle, and talk to her
child while offering the bottle while the other may resort
to a mechanical device to hold the bottle and go about
her chores while the child is feeding.
"Relationship"
15
implies feeling and attitudes that one member expresses
to the other.
There is content and q·'J.ality over a
specified time interval when considering a "relationship."
There is a general lack of consensus among social
scientists regarding the skill components of establishing
"relationships" related to socially competent behavior.
Foster and Ritchey (1979) define "social competence" as
those responses that prove effective or that increase
the likelihood of positive effects.
O'Malley (1977)
described "social competence" as "productive and mutually
satisfying" interactions between the child and peers or
adults.
The concept of "interpersonal competence" as
described by Weinstein (1969) is more functional for the
purpose of this paper.
The central issue in "inter-
personal competence" is the ability to establish and
maintain certain kinds of perceptions of oneself and of
others.
The establishment of relationships with other people
is, for individuals, a desired goal or a rewarding
experience.
Consequently, interpersonal relationships
can be considered to be reinforcing events for most people.
Children who lack appropriate social skills
reflected in their behaviors with others experience
social isolation and sometimes rejection.
A large number
16
of developmentally delayed children, regardless of their
disability or the etiology of that disability, lack
"interpersonal competence."
Many display multiple
behavior problems, combining difficulties related to
their activity level, social interactions, compliance, and
verbal behavior.
In fact, social behavior has long been viewed as one
means of differentiating handicapped persons from the
"normal" population.
Mental retardation, for example, has
been conceptualized historically in terms of both
intellectual subnormality and interpersonal deficiency
(AAMD, 1977).
Prior to the development of a fully organized sense
of self and self-awareness, young developmentally disabled
children are largely dependent on others in generating,
organizing, and interpreting their ongoing experiences.
That is, they experience themselves through the experiences of the "significant other."
Both the young child and the adult are responsive
partners in this social system.
same influence on the child.
Not everyone has the
People who interact with
and can influence the child are called "significant
others.''
For the developmentally delayed youngster, the
family and caregivers are two important categories of
persons who make up the child's primary group of "significant others."
They provide the sources of self-worth and
17
self-awareness that the child first experiences.
Current Curriculum Focus
Relatively little is known of the day-to-day
learning of social behaviors that might occur in classrooms serving young developmentally delayed children.
Unit and lesson plans can be found to teach specific
skills:
mobility, undressing and dressing, self-help
skills that have social value such as toileting, object
recognition, sharing, etc.
Yet these skills are
generally seen as making up four functional performance
areas of the curriculum and areas of development:
gross
motor, fine motor, social, and language development.
Little attention is given to the manner in which skills
are taught and learned.
While it is generally accepted
that developmentally delayed children need their environments organized and structured for them by their
caregivers, little importance is given to the reciprocal
nature of interaction between the child and adult.
As practitioners, we are asked to create programs for
children with various handicapping conditions.
The
practitioner is presented with a complex question:
''What
knowledge exists regarding developmental processes and how
can I use this knowledge in making decisions regarding the
current developmental status and/or intervention needs of
a particular child?"
A simplistic answer would suggest
18
that the practitioner has responsibility for knowing and
being able to use the variety of developmental assessment
tools that have been marketed as well as accepted
intervention strategies.
These, in fact, constitute sub-
sets of information typically provided future teachers in
early childhood/special education programs.
A more
complex, but also more logical answer to the question
points to the importance and relevance of a vast body of
current research in child development, which is not
available in the format of packaged assessment tools
and/or widely accepted intervention strategies.
The
practitioner's task, then, is to apply this kind of
information to programming for children who are not
developing according to normative expectations.
The
... practitioner need not play the role
of an empty vessel waiting to be filled
with selected information provided by
the research community.
Rather, the
practitioner should actively seek and
apply a variety of therapies and procedures as they seem useful and relevant
to the problem at hand ... (Bricker, 1982,
p. 2).
Most classroom practitioners are familiar with a
number of major theories and research in the fields of
child development, developmental psychology, special education, and learning theory.
They have provided a broad
base for understanding how children develop.
The
following section will discuss theory and research relating
to social interaction skills of developmentally delayed
19
children in hopes that the classroom teacher can more
effectively evolve a meaningful classroom program.
'
0
CHAPTER TWO
REVIEW AND DISCUSSION OF THEORY AND RESEARCH
Throughout the literature that deals with the subject
of the behavior of young developmentally delayed children
are scattered, varied, and often conflicting theories and
generalizations regarding social skills learning.
Much of
current developmental research centers on demonstrating
early competencies.
I hope to turn the focus to the
processes and mechanisms of learning those skills that are
necessary for achieving interactions with the environment.
Little exists in the literature regarding social
skills learning and the transfer of learning by young
developmentally delayed children.
The review of research
brings to the forefront certain vital issues.
I will
first discuss sone of the theory and research on social
skills and social learning theory as it relates to the
developmentally delayed child.
Second, I will summarize
some relevant points regarding the transfer of learning
and third, points relevant to theory and research on
adult-child interactions.
Social Skills and Learning Theory
Social skills are acquired naturalistically as a
consequence of several basic learning mechanisms.
20
These
21
include positive reinforcement of skills, vicarious or
observational learning experiences, receiving interpersonal
feedback, and the development of cognitive expectancies
concerning interpersonal situations (Kelly, 1982).
In addition to physical maturation, children learn
through social interaction.
This, in turn, is colored
by the common standards of conduct and behavior that a
culture expects from its members (Kogan, 1980).
A young
developmentally delayed child who lacks expressive language
ability may try to initiate social interaction with
another child in a physical way, i.e., taking another
child's toy, pushing, hitting, biting, etc.
While this
behavior may be consistent with the child's present
social abilities, it is usually deemed "socially inappropriate" by others, particularly those adults in caregiving
positions.
Our present society at large teaches that
hitting, etc., is not acceptable.
So the child is taught
other means to facilitate his intentions.
The handicapped child's inability to exhibit
socially skilled behavior in a given situation can be
explained in a number of ways (Kelly, 1982).
First, it
may be that a specific type of social skill was never
acquired or was inadequately learned.
skill is never exhibited in any
Therefore, the
~ituation.
The individual
does not have the appropriate skill behaviors in his or
her repertoire.
22
Next, a specific type of skill is learned and
exhibited effectively in a certain situation but fails to
appear in other situations.
For example, the young child
may be able to verbally assert himself by saying, "Stop!"
to a more aggressive classmate, but is unable to assert
himself on the playground or with unfamiliar children.
Then there are situational variables.
A specific
type of social skill may result in different consequences.
In some situations it is reinforced, while in others it
is not.
If a skill is reinforced consistently in some
situations but not in others, an individual should learn
to identify or discriminate those situations in which a
particular interpersonal strategy is most functional or
capable of leading to natural reinforcement from the
social environment.
Language also plays an all-important role in
learning socially appropriate skills.
The growth in
understanding another's intent hinges on shared understanding of a cultural communication system (Bronson,
1981).
This system of mutuality, "reciprocal obligation,"
is central to human adaptation.
It involves the capabili-
ties of self-awareness and empathy, that is, the ability
to take another's point of view and the ability to
accurately perceive the emotional experience of another
23
(Tronick, 1980).
In Piaget's framework, these abilities
are slowly constructed during the child's first two years
of life.
For developmentally delayed children, these
abilities continue to be constructed during the child's
early school years.
The role of parents as caregivers in the social
learning of the child is understandably important.
Its
importance in the development of the handicapped child is
magnified~
Generally, the world of the young develop-
mentally delayed child is limited to his primary family.
Because of the physical and other related needs of the
delayed child, the caregiver role is intensified.
Developmentally delayed children are more dependent on
maternal care and remain dependent for a far longer period
of time.
They take longer to learn to feed, toilet,
bathe, undress, and dress themselves.
The parent-child
interaction is likely to be more intense because the
parent needs to spend more time with the developmentally
delayed child.
Moreover, caregivers of delayed children may find it
difficult to accurately interpret verbal and nonverbal
cues of the child, depending upon the type and severity
of the handicapping condition.
For example, high-risk
infants from either the "reproductive" or "caretaking
casuality" continuum tend to be unresponsive or hypoactive.
24
At the same time, the ·mothers tend to be hyperactive
(Field, 1980).
Field found that mothers of children with
Down syndrome and with cerebral palsy are typically
"hyperactive" during interactions.
They try harder to
engage their infants by being more active and directive in
their interactions with them, whereas their infants tend
to become less involved and less active.
The children
learn that their actions have little or no effect.
The
role of the caregiver and the importance of the interactive
quality between the caregiver and child is essential to
the understanding of social skills acquisition and will
be discussed later.
Social Learning Theory
Except for elementary reflexes, people are not born
with repertoires of behavior; such repertoires are
learned.
Learning would be exceedingly laborious, not to
mention hazardous, if one had to depend on the effects of
one's own actions to inform him/her of what to do.
Social Learning Theory, as described by Albert Bandura
(1963, 1971, 1973) views social competencies as learned
behaviors.
Bandura tells us that the process of learning
can be considerably shortened and accelerated by modelingimitation.
The capacity to learn by observation enables
people to acquire large, integrated patterns of behavior
without having to form them gradually by trial and error.
25
Yet skills are not perfected through observations alone,
nor are they developed solely by trial and error.
People
usually achieve a close approximation of the new behavior
by imitating.
That is, the new behavior is refined through
self-correction and adjustments on the basis of feedback
from the performance and from focused demonstrations of
segments that have been only partially learned.
Imitation of modeled acts need not be immediate.
Delayed imitation is a relatively common occurance and is
dependent on variables in the learner, the task, model,
and situation.
There is also a wide range of accuracy of the
performance of modeled acts.
This is apparent especially
since individuals are all different in their capabilities
to imitate.
Also, we often imitate only portions of what
has been modeled.
There may be little necessary correspondence between
an individual's ability to exhibit one type of social
skill and the same person's ability to effectively handle
situations calling for another kind of skill.
In addi-
tion, even a single type of social skill, such as
assertiveness or conversational skill, is not consistently
exhibited across all situations (Kelly, 1982).
A second mechanism influencing the direct learning
of skills involves the specificity of circumstances under
which they are reinforced.
Mischel (1973) has pointed
26
out that few social behaviors are reinforced consistently
across all situations or settings.
A number of factors regulate the amount and types
of observational experiences.
Included are the observer's
characteristics, the features of the modeled activity,
and the structural arrangements of the interactions.
People cannot learn much by observation unless they
attend to and perceive accurately the significant
features of the modeled behavior.
Simply exposing persons
to sequences of modeling stimuli does not in itself
guarantee that they will attend closely to the cues, that
they will necessarily select from the total stimulus
complex the most relevant events, or that they will even
perceive accurately the cues to which their attention has
been directed
(Parke,
1972).
Attentional processes
constitute one variable among the observer's characteristics.
They determine what is selectively observed and
what is extracted from such experiences.
Imitation is an active process.
both overt and internal.
It involves action,
Observational learning relies
mainly on two representational systems:
and verbal representation.
visual imagery
Visual imagery plays an
especially important part in observational learning
during early periods of development when verbal skills are
not as developed.
'
<l
It is also important in learning
27
patterns that do not lend themselves readily to verbal
coding or with children with delayed acquisition of verbal
language.
Bandura (1962, 1969, 1972) proposes a two-phase
model of imitation or identification.
The first phase he
labels, "acquisition," that is, where the child learns
whatever he sees performed by others.
According to
Bandura, before imitation can occur, an individual must
form an internalized representation of the modeled acts.
Of course the child sees many contradictory patterns of
behavior, and many of the behaviors he observes are never
imitated (acted out).
Acquisition is partially under the
control of stimulus characteristics of the observer and
by other processes such as attention and motivation.
The second phase is "performance" of a learned
pattern of behavior.
Bandura identifies three factors
that determine performance.
original model.
One is identification of the
Children are more likely to remember and
perform the behavior of nurturant and powerful models
rather than those of people they do not like or respect.
Second, the consequence of the behavior for the model is
important -- that is, was he rewarded or punished for the
behavior?
Lastly, the consequence for the child is seen
as important to the performance of the behavior.
Bandura's Social Learning Theory thus considers
28
reinforcement and punishment, but mainly as influences on
performance rather than as influences on acquisition.
Traditional reinforcement approaches have focused on the
control of responses through externally administered
consequences.
According to Social Learning Theory,
behavior is maintained not only by directly experienced
consequences arising from external sources but also by
vicarious reinforcement and by self-reinforcement (Bandura, 1971).
In addition, reinforcers are not absolute.
differ for each individual.
They
Goals that one person
considers highly desirable may be quite unimportant to
someone else.
Autistic and some retarded children appear
highly unresponsive to the interpersonal attention that
most children find reinforcing.
They tend to remain
oriented toward primary (biological need) rather than
secondary (social) forms of reinforcement.
This may
account partially for the impaired social skill development of these children, since many interpersonal
consequences of skill exhibition do not seem salient
reinforcers for them (Kelly, 1982).
There are many factors relevant in determining
imitative behaviors in children.
In addition to
consequence considerations there are other factors related
to the child and his/her perceptions.
Four factors
important in determining imitative behaviors have been
29
identified by Zigler (1982, p. 45):
1) the child's level of cognitive
development, 2) the attitude toward the
adult or other model, 3) the nature of
the task that confronts the child, and
4) the child's history of success or
failure in using his own intellectual
ability.
The earliest forms of competence motives for
imitation are bound up with the infant's feelings about
the model.
As children mature, competence motivational
factors take on a different perspective.
For instance,
children imitate most when they are confronted with a
problem that is just beyond the "cutting edge" (Bandura,
1977, p. 164).
The child readily imitates solutions to
problems that are somewhat too difficult because, in so
doing, he actually advances his level of competence.
Furthermore, the child is unlikely to imitate solutions
to problems that are far beyond his abilities because he
does not understand them.
Motives for imitating appear to differ significantly
with age.
Just as a child's ability to imitate changes
developmentally, so also do the motives for imitating.
Two-year-old children generally do not imitate for the
same reason as children of five to seven years.
Motives
for imitating are relatively few when the child is
immature.
According to the social learning view, people vary
30
in what they teach, model, and reinforce with children of
different ages.
For example, at first, control is
necessarily external.
In attempting to discourage hazard-
ous conduct in children who have not yet learned to talk,
parents and teachers must use physical intervention.
As
children mature, social sanctions increasingly replace
physical ones.
Social Learning Theory (Bandura, 1962, 1969, 1977)
treats motivation as a sub-process to explain and
highlight the fact that people are selective in what they
choose to model.
The cognitive/motivational level of the
child should be examined when viewing why and how certain
behaviors are imitated.
Generally, cognitive level is
predictive of the amount of acquisition and level of
performance of modeled acts that an observer can display.
A minimum level of perceptual-representational capacity
would seem necessary in order for imitation to occur
(Parke, 1972).
The child's attention span, the number of
elements that can be encoded, as well as the nature of
the coding system that can be employed:
motoric,
perceptual, and/or symbolic are important.
In general, the ability to show delayed imitation
is a complex cognitive process requiring storing and
retrieval from memory.
Immediate imitation is a much
simpler cognitive process.
In addition, ability to delay
any overt modeling response until a later time, long after
31
the initial observation, implies the ability to form a
kind of internal representation from memory across time.
Another basic component involved in observational
learning concerns the retention of modeled events.
In
order to reproduce social behavior without the continued
presence of external modeling cues, a person must retain
the original observational components in some symbolic
form.
Among the many variables governing retention
processes, rehearsal operations most effectively stabilize
and strengthen acquired responses (Bandura and Jeffrey,
1971).
Symbolic coding of modeling stimuli is even more
efficacious than rehearsal in facilitating long-term
retention of matching behavior.
During exposure to
stimulus sequences, observers tend to .code, to classify,
and to reorganize elements into familiar and more easily
remembered schemes.
Observational learning involves two
representational systems -- imagery and verbal representation.
After modeling stimuli have been coded into
images or words for memory representation, they function
as guides for subsequent retrieval and reproduction.
Transfer of Learning
Many in psychology and education have admitted that
transfer is at once the most important and yet most
32
neglected part of the psychology of learning (Haslerud,
1972).
"Transfer of learning" means that experience or
performance on one task influences performance on some
subsequent task (Ellis, 1965).
Practically all new learning is influenced in some
fashion by previous learning.
The problem in after-
learning is really a duality -- how to make available
what has been learned and how to derive new alternatives
that were not included in the original learning.
The influence of transfer is pervasive.
It is found
not only in intellectual tasks and in complex motor
skills but is seen in emotional reactions and attitudes
of individuals.
It is significant to note that early studies of
transfer of learning, indeed most of the studies of human
learning, were first· conducted in the classroom as distinct from the laboratory in an attempt to better
understand the teaching-learning process.
In addition,
many of these studies were oriented towards examining
conceptions of transfer which had direct relevance to
educational practices.
Later, around 1930, increasing effort was placed on
laboratory studies of learning that had as one of their
main goals the attempt to develop laws of behavior.
It
was felt that a science of human behavior could be best
developed through carefully controlled laboratory studies
33
of the learning process.
Certainly classroom studies of
learning are important, but it was argued that the
complexity of the classroom environment made it difficult
to discover fundamental laws of learning.
It is from
these studies that we derive much of our knowledge of
learning transfer.
Certain guidelines can be identified to help in
teaching for transfer (Ellis, 1965).
Maximizing the
similarity between the teaching and the ultimate testing
situation facilitates transfer.
Providing adequate
experience with the original task and providing for a
variety of examples also help to increase transfer.
Other points include making certain that general principles
are understood before expecting much transfer.
Maintenance of learned skills has been enhanced by
response shaping and fading of reinforcement, by transferring reinforcers to the experimental subjects, and by
gradually changing reinforcement rates and qualities
(Brown and Brown, 1982).
The most effective ways to
create transfer, according to Brown and Brown, is to
teach and reinforce skills in their natural setting.
Michelson, Sugai, Wood, and Kazdin (1983) describe
procedures to promote generalization of learned concepts
and skills.
They too emphasize the teaching that will be
supported by the natural environment and training across
••
34
multiple persons and settings common to the natural
environment.
Clearly, in order to teach for transfer, we must
have a fairly explicit understanding of the "variables
known to influence transfer before a technology of
application can develop" (Ellis, 1965, p. 64).
In other
words, special educators must have a good understanding
of the behaviors to be exhibited by the students and the
kinds of conditions which will insure the development and
appropriate use of these behaviors.
Time is one variable that certainly affects transfer
of learning from one task or situation to another.
Transfer of training remains approximately constant as
long as performance of the transfered tasks does not
depend on memory for specific items in the original task.
Where it does depend on memory for specific items,
transfer will vary as a function of time elapsing between
tasks.
The fact that information is available in memory,
therefore, does not guarantee that a person will be able
to draw upon or retrieve that information when it is
required.
One major component of intelligence is the access to
stored information on the occasion when the information
would be rc:levant.
Retarded children frequently fail to
use relevant knowledge even when it has been learned.
In
35
other words, they may store information but may not
be able to retrieve and use it in applicable situations.
l{,atz (1964) and Kaufman and Pickman's 1966 study (cited
in Heintz and Blackman, 1977) have shown that retarded
individuals have the ability to transfer learning
strategies.
It remains for special educators to address
themselves to the task of facilitating the generalization
and application of learned skills to other situations in
which the retarded individual functions.
The extent to which persons learn a new task depends
to some degree on individual learner characteristics.
When faced with a new task, the ease with which it is
learned will depend upon past experiences of the learner
and how these experiences are utilized in the present
task (Mcintire and Denzman, 1963).
Intelligence of the
learner and motivational factors including anxiety are
also important (Ellis, 1965).
Caregiving Relationship
The developing child not only requires a challenging
and stimulating environment, but one that is stable, safe,
secure, comprehendable, and predictable.
While con-
ceptually one may distinguish between the physical and the
social environment, the fact remains that a physical
setting is at one end and the same time also a social,
cultural, and psychological environment.
36
Social class is a "locator variable" (Enzer and
Goin, 1978).
The life condition of a given social class
at a particular point in time are such as to increase the
probability that a given socialization pattern will be
found in that segment of society.
Therefore, it is the
immediate environment in which the child develops which
has the impact on his life.
The fusion between the child's biology and environment
is a critical construct for the understanding of psychosocial retardation (Ramey and Finkelstein, 1981).
Psychosocial disadvantage has a significant impact on the
organism even before birth.
Poor mothers are less likely
than more advantaged mothers to receive adequate prenafal
care.
The biological consequences of the social conditions
include factors that predisposes the child toward mental
subnormality.
Furthermore, the quality of the environment
interacts with biological factors through
time~
Conse-
quently, developmental outcomes are not predictable from
either factor alone.
As Sameroff (1975) has demonstrated,
the impact of early biological difficulties is dependent
upon the quality of the caregiving environment.
An important factor entering into the child-environment interactional process is the behavioral expression
of temperament.
From early infancy, children manifest
differences in their characteristic reactions to the
37
varied stimuli and demands of day-to-day living.
The
individual behavioral style of children has been systematically studied in terms of such primary characteristics as rythmicity or biological function, general
activity level, positive or negative responses to new
situations (approach/withdrawal), sensory threshold,
quality of mood, intensity of reactions, persistence in
ongoing activities, and distractibility and attention
span (Thomas, Chess, Berch, 1963).
These temperamental
qualities significantly affect the normal child's
reaction to child care practices and to intrafamilial and
extrafamilial demands.
Certain patterns of temperament
combined with environmental stress may lead to disturbances in behavioral development.
There has been a rapid expansion of evidence that the
process of child development is a reciprocal interpersonal
phenomenon (Kogan, 1980).
The interactive milieu'. in
which growth and change take place is an essential
component.
Adults are essential in constructing a favorable
millieu for children's social experience; this includes
the provision of adequate time and space for close,
emotionally supportive interactions.
One of the major
factors determining developmental competence is the
interaction between parent and child, particularly the
38
contingent responsiveness of the parent (Beckwith inAltman
and Mira, 1976).
Since it has been shown that the
patterns of interactions between the parent and the
handicapped child differ from those of parents and nonhandicapped child (Kogan, Wineberger, and Babbitt, 1969;
Kogan and Tyler, 1973; Marshall, Hegrenes, and Goldstein,
1973; Terdel, 1976), it is important that professionals
be attentive to this interaction.
I do not intend, however, to describe the
parent-developmentally delayed child interaction as
deviant or dysfunctional.
Rath~r,
parents may respond
differently to their child, report more stress, and hold
more negative attitudes about their developmentally
delayed child than parents of normally developing children.
They may exhibit compensatory behaviors which serve to
provide more stimulation to their child than they intend.
Their interactions may require adjustments, but they
generally are functional and positive rather than deviant
and negative.
We know, for example, that the development of Down
syndrome infants is characterized by delays in the
affective, cognitive, and motor behavior domains.
These
behavioral deviations may produce and/or necessitate
concomitant adjustments in caregiving behavior.
Parents
may need to be more aware of their child's behavioral
39
"cues" and may need to learn ways to stimulate and
effectively interact with their child.
Critical in the child's early social life within the
family is the opportunity to be mentored by a warm,
responsible adult.
The interactional format followed by
parents and children reflects mutuality (as in the example
of conversational turn-taking).
Much research in the past decade confirms the
critical importance of a secure infant-mother attachment
for the development of one important social skill -compliance (Stayton, Hogan, Ainsworth, 1971; Ainsworth,
Bell, Stayton, 1971).
The infant's attachment is fostered
by a positively responsive parent who is aware of and
accurately interprets the child's distress signals,
responds to the child's signals promptly and effectively,
and has tender and gentle holding and feeding patterns
(Ainsworth, Bell, Stayton, 1971).
Stayton, Hogan, and Ainsworth (1971) studied
compliance in the last quarter of the first year of life
through in-home naturalistic observations of twenty-five
middle-class mothers and their babies every three weeks
for four hours.
Three scales were devised to assess the
degree of harmony in the mother-infant interaction:
sensitivity/insensitivity, acceptance/rejection, and
cooperation/interference.
Infant compliance to commands
I
4
such as, "No, no!" or "Come here!" was strongly and
positively related to all three indicators of the quality
of the mother-infant relationship.
Thus, the findings of
this study suggest that children are more likely to obey
parental signals if they have a positive, harmonious, and
affectional relationship with their caregiver.
The importance of mentoring by an adult is also
made clear in a study of deaf infants reviewed by
Maccoby (1980).
\{hen trainers were used an hour a day to
teach sign language to the infants, the children became
attached to their trainers.
Later, attachment bonds in
the context of learning signaling skills grew between the
same infants and their mothers when the experimenters
involved parents as tutor$ in sign language to their own
children.
The rationale of mutual responding has received
strong support from a number of investigators (Thomas,
1981; Ainsworth and Bell, 1974; Bruner, 1975; and SugarmanBell, 1978).
Mutual responding leads to interpersonal
competence for both the infant and the caregiver.
In recent years, the reciprocal relationship between
infants and caregivers has become a focus of research.
. I
With mounting evidence of the sophisticated capabilities
of infants, researchers have begun to understand the
importance of the interaction between infants and their
caregivers -- a change from the earlier belief that
infants merely responded to the attention and ministrations
of others in their environment (Lewis and Rosenblum,
1974).
The fact that the infants themselves elicit and
program behaviors from others and to some extent affect
the kinds of responses they get is a finding that has
special relevance for the families of handicapped
children.
Parents of disabled children are particularly
vulnerable to experiencing difficulties in the bonding
that is the basis for the development of reciprocity so
essential for nurturing relationships.
In extreme cases
in which bonding with the child did not occur, ·caregiving
relationships may be so unnurturing as to be abusive
(Shell, 1982).
Two classes of criteria have commonly been used to
index mutuality -- temporal contiguity and presence of
adult-detectable links between the behavior of each member
of the pair (Bronson, 1981).
Sometimes the actual
presence of the handicapped child brings out feelings of
guilt, shame, and/or remorse in the caregiver.
The
caregiver may limit interaction with the child so as not
to confront her feelings toward the child.
In some
instances the caregiver may be hesitant to cuddle or be
physically responsive to the child in fear of doing
42
"something wrong" or "breaking" the child.
Whatever the
reason, in many cases there is a lack of mutuality
expressed in the caregiver-child relationship.
Effective parenting is no longer considered to be
derived from a single type of practice, but rather from
a responsiveness to particular infant behaviors and styles
and emphathetic understanding of needs.
For parents,
there seem to be three particularly important sets of
variables that might influence the style of interaction
parental temperament, parental attitudes about their
handicapped child, and parenting experience.
Child-
related variables include temperament and developmental
status.
\~atever
behavior or attitude each brings into the
interactive situation will actively and significantly
influence the other's responses and interaction.
Fraiberg's (1974) account of blind infants and their
mothers vividly attests to the difficulties in developing
reciprocity between them.
These include the absence of
an eye language and of differentiated facial signs, the
less frequent smile, and the parent's own need for the
response smile.
Some children may be severely impaired in the ability
to respond to their parents' care and nurturance and to
elicit the appropriate parental responses or attention.
When the child's motor and/or perceptual systems are
impaired and therefore interfere with the earliest
interactions between themselves and their caregivers,
reciprocity and parental rewards from reciprocal interactions may not be forthcoming without assistance.
It is apparent, and readily confirmed, that the
mothers of slowly developing children participate in
transactions that are less rewarding and provide for less
positive feedback than received by mothers of normal
children.
According to Hogan (1980), delayed children
experience more ignoring and nonacceptance by their
caretakers than "normal" children.
In addition, mothers of
delayed children tend to be more controlling while their
children exercise low amounts of direct control over
their environment.
According to Rogers-Warren (1979), lowered
responsiveness and limited social interaction have three
effects on the interactive quality between child and
caregiver:
1) the child's limited participation in the
social aspects of caregiving may not provide adequate
reinforcement for sustaining adult attention, 2) the
unresponsive child may miss many language-learning
opportunities because he does not provide the responses
the adult can shape and reinforce, and 3) the child does
not experience the events and learn the skills for
controlling the environment.
44
Although
it is not clear whether behavior problems
are more prevalent among developmentally disabled
children, the skill deficits which define this population
suggest the need for supplementary training for parents.
Trained parents might be able to offset some of the
children's deficits.
Training parents to help their
developmentally delayed child maintain behavior taught to
them elsewhere is vital.
The child's difficulty in
generalizing acquired behaviors to new environments is a
central feature of their learning disability.
There have been several reviews of the literature in
training parents to apply behavioral techniques (Altman
and Mira, 1983).
Few have focused on parents· of children
with developmental disabilities.
Little research was
found that described work with caregivers and their young
developmentally delayed children which used the mutuality
of interaction to teach and maintain skills.
The professional is transient and should not be the
dominant authority in constructing and implementing the
child's program (Hobbs, 1975; Warfield, 1975).
Yet
special educators have tended to minimize the parents'
role as teachers of social skills and the influence of the
home on the developmentally delayed child's learning
(Bricker, Bricker, Iacino, and Dennison, 1976; O'Connell,
1975).
A more enlightened view envisions parents and
teachers joined in a working partnership and sharing
45
responsibilities for training new skills and transferring
learned behaviors to other settings.
The following section will describe a progression of
social interaction behaviors.
First, it is essential to
present the principles upon which the hierarchy is based.
• !i
CHAPTER THREE
SOCIAL SKILL ACQUISITION
Basic Principles of Program
Several authors have argued for and provided models
of parent involvement in the education of young handicapped
children.
Parents and professionals alike, however,
have suggested that attempts at true partnerships have
succeeded only minimally.
The program described in the
pages that follow is based on a series of principles as a
philosophical foundation for teaching the developmentally
delayed child the behaviors necessary for positive social
interaction.
Each principle is discussed in terms of its
implication for adults caring for and/or teaching
developmentally delayed children.
The program based on
this set of principles calls for a reexamination of
existing attitudes and practices and cites specific
implications for educators.
Principle {f:l
The learning process of developmentally delayed
children is based on the principles of child development
and takes into account the child's strengths and
weaknesses.
The process of learning positive social interaction
.
,)
46
47
behaviors needs to be planned in relation to two
standards:
the general sequence of normal development for
all children and the child's individual pattern of
development -- his strengths and weaknesses.
A plan of
educational intervention must include both the normal and
delayed elements within a child because of this interweaving of normal and delayed functions.
Take for example, a six year old
developmentally delayed child who is
learning independent dressing skills.
He is unable to completely undress and
needs assistance particularly with the
buttons on his shirt.
He is insistent,
however, on unfastening the buttons
himself, sometimes resulting in torn
shirts and/or lost buttons. While one's
natural tendency may be to use power -verbal or physical -- to perform the
task for the child, the adult needs to
recognize and support the child's desire
for autonomy.
Principle
4F2
There is systematic order implicit in the
developmentally delayed child's behaviors.
Piaget's constructivist perspective suggests that the
repertoire of the child viewed within specific environments and environmental demands is the basis upon which
the child develops.
This interactionist framework is used
to discuss the process by which seemingly simple behaviors
such as sucking and grasping of objects develop into more
complex, more functionally sophisticated forms of actions.
Recognizing and using these changes in behavior is the
48
key to successful educational intervention.
There are elements of a sequential, relatively slow
changing nature even with a dynamic change-oriented
educational approach.
The teacher and parent must
recognize within a child behavioral characteristics that
can be utilized as strengths in helping the child continue
to grow.
This idea also suggests that gains made early
must be maintained and built upon by subsequent learning.
Principle ffo3
The delayed child's development is a function of
individual differences and the child's transactions with
the changing social and physical environment.
The behavior and development of delayed children is a
function of individual differences and of the physical
and social characteristics of their environments.
There is
a transactional, reciprocal interplay between biologyenvironment, person-person, and person-environment
interaction that can facilitate or delay development.
To
facilitate learning by developmentally delayed children,
practitioners must seek an optimal match between persons
and their social-ecological components.
These matches
between developmentally delayed children and their environments need to be flexible to accomodate changes in
environmental settings.
Neither the individual characteristics of the child
49
nor environment is constant over time.
At each moment,
the characteristics of both the child and the environment
change in important ways.
Moreover, these differences
are interdependent and change as a function of their
mutual influences on one another.
Principle {/:4
The characteristics of adult caregivers and physical
settings are as important an influence on deve-lopment as
the characteristics of the individual child.
Interpersonal skills are seen as progressing through
time within the child's experiential framework of relationships with the physical and social environment.
The
child's skill level is directly related to the reciprocal
manner in which the caregiver and child engage and
manipulate the environment and interact with each other.
Programs of developmental intervention for delayed
children should focus as much on the characteristics of
adults and on the characteristics of physical, social
settings as on the characteristics of the delayed child.
The unique qualities of persons should be recognized and
the characteristics of settings can be manipulated to
facilitate optimal person-environment congruence.
50
Principle 1fo5
Learning is experiential.
The young developmentally delayed child learns, grows,
and acquires meaning through experience.
What children
experience will influence what and how they learn.
The
young child's self-awareness, self-confidence, and willingness to take risks in new situations grows out of
significant experiences.
Developmentally delayed children
learn through experiences rather than simply through
verbal processing of directions and reflections made by
adults.
\fuat is taught in the classroom must be applicable
to natural settings outside the classroom.
Principle 1fo6
Parental attitudes and characteristics and the
settings they create influence learning in the home
environment .
Learning in the home occurs in at least two ways.
First, parents directly influence their child's development through their attitudes and personal characteristics
they bring to parent-child interactions such as feeding,
dressing, communication exchanges, playing, etc.
Second,
parents indirectly influence their child's social and
cognitive development by how they organize and arrange
their home environment and set limits and communicate
expectations to their children -- that is, through the
51
parental "managerial functions."
The teacher or other professional can assist parents
by helping them to generate responses contingent on the
child's behaviors and provide stimulating experiences for
themselves and their developmentally delayed child.
Through the design and implementation of these activities,
parents learn more about how their child responds to the
environment.
They are more able to change their own
behavior to accomodate the changing response patterns of
their child.
Principle
117
Transfer of behaviors learned in one setting to
another setting is particularly difficult for the delayed
child.
Developmentally delayed children experience difficulty
transferring classroom learning to their home environment.
Therefore, close examination is needed to determine the
value of particular skills to the child and his interaction with the natural environment (outside the school).
All of us have been in situations where we have been
required to learn certain skills which we quickly "forgot"
or disregarded once removed from the original learning
environment with its reinforcers that controlled our
initial skill acquisition.
We, in effect, chose not to
use or display our learned skills in the new setting.
It
is probable that developmentally delayed children also
display this same self-(mis)direction and may not apply
what they have learned outside the structured classroom
setting.
Principle 118
Social behaviors can be developed and sustained in
diverse environments by their reinforcing consequences.
To the extent that various types of social
interactions lead to positive consequences for a child and
later for an adult, it is likely that they will be
reinforced and included in that person's repertoire of
interpersonal social behaviors.
Transfer of learned
behaviors from one setting to another can be enhanced by
the existence of the positive interactional quality between child and adult.
Even during early infancy, it is apparent that
rudimentary social behaviors can be developed and maintained by their reinforcing consequences.
Reinforcement
has meaning only when the reinforcers are defined in terms
of their functional ability to increase the likelihood
of the behaviors that they follow.
Infants appear to
learn very quickly those behaviors capable of eliciting
positive consequences or reinforcement, including:
to bring food, attention, or relief from discomfort;
smiling and cooing to bring social attention and
crying
.I
53
stimulation from others; and the exhibition of motor
behaviors which lead to physical and attentional responses
from other people.
The following skill progression is based on these
eight principles.
The hierarchy is seen as a developmental
progression in which the stimulation of developmentally
appropriate behaviors is encouraged.
The adult's role,
the amount of intervention required, the types of
activities and materials, the experiences needed, and the
type of participation change with each level.
The
following section provides a description and discussion of
each level of development.
Skill Progression
For some time, the field of special education has
recognized the need to teach young developmentally delayed
children behaviors necessary for them to relate effectively
with the world around them.
It has not been enough
simply to teach academic skills and to address problems
through various therapies and behavioral interventions.
The teaching of behaviors that will allow children to
interact and/or cope effectively with their environments
must be a standard component in classroom curriculum.
The classroom teacher, however·, generally has
difficulty in delineating and targeting those behaviors
that comprise the area of "social skills" learning.
54
Moreover, some teachers do not look beyond the immediate
behavior of the child to see the larger picture of "where
the child is going."
This section attempts to offer to
caregivers a more helpful perspective of social
development in the developmentally delayed young child.
Just as children differ and grow according to their
differentiated developmental needs, the management
techniques and communication patterns used by the caregiver should be differentiated according to the specific
needs of the child.
The caregiver's role, the amount of
intervention required, the types of activities and
materials used, the experiences needed, and the type of
participation change with each progressive leve1. 3
The hypothetical structure of skill levels presented
below does not imply that one child will progress exactly
like another, nor does it imply that one can predict from
one group how another group of similar-appearing children
might progress.
Individual children progress at varying
rates through this developmental hierarchy.
I have hypothesized five distinct levels of skill
acquisition.
Their progression is visually presented in
the form of a diagram in Figure 1.
In the context of
this progression of skills, the child is seen as developing from an awareness level to a judgment level.
The
adult posture vis-a-vis the child's behavior changes from
55
one of almost constant physical presence to one of
observer or "counselor."
Level I:
Awareness
Definition.
The child responds fleetingly to the
environment and seeks pleasure through his own actions.
During the early stages of development, the quality of
the child's response is not a primary concern.
Responses
in general and participation are reinforced.
Characteristics of Level I Behavior.
Piaget's work
in the "construction of reality" (1954) is particularly
relevant to this phase of development.
In order to
recognize the existence of another person as separate
from self, the child must develop a concept of object
constancy, i.e., maintain a stable mental image of an
object or person.
In the early stages of development,
experiences need to be predictable, simple, and familiar.
Repetition of experiences is essential.
It is from the
safety of the child's dependency on adults that the child
learns successful exploration and pleasurable results.
When these two processes combine in a
balance~
the child
develops the skill to know "what comes next."
The developmentally delayed child at Level I, as
with the normally developing infant, is actively seeking
comfort and pleasure.
Ut~lizing
the child's quest for
55
pleasant results, the teacher can help the child build
a repertoire of responses that assist him obtain
gratifying responses from the environment.
This process
is the foundation for positive interaction and motivation.
To meet the child's needs, the adult must not only
compensate for deficits or delays, but more important,
stimulate behaviors that provide pleasurable experiences.
The child's sense of pleasure comes primarily from
two sources:
people and the child's own body.
Basic
pleasures include interactions with people, eating,
touching, and muscle activity including movements of arms,
legs, and mouth (sucking, mouthing, random vocalizing,
blowing, etc.).
In an infant, these behaviors are appro-
priate, but when evident in a delayed seven-year-old
child, the same behaviors may evoke feelings of frustration or dismay from adults.
If viewed as indicators of
comfort-seeking in a developmental context, the same
behaviors can provide important keys for motivating a
child to begin gradual developmental expansion.
From the basic pleasure-pain response system, the
child develops feelings and attitudes about self and
others.
The child's teacher and parents need to provide
experiences in which the child associates his own actions
and people with comfort and pleasure.
The repetition of
experiences should be continued until the response
becomes a part of the existing repertoire of behavior.
At that point, the response can be more freely generalized
into new situations.
For example, a flailing arm movement can
be physically directed to touch a large
sheet of paper and fingerpaints as the
teacher says, "paper--paint." Through
repetitions of this movement, the child
eventually can produce the arm movement
to the paper and paint independently.
Caregiver Role.
The caregiver acts as an "arouser."
She provides satisfaction and pleasure.
Communication is
through acceptance, nurturance, and body language.
When
working with children at Level I, the caregiver needs to
use the tools most readily accessible -- her body and
voice.
At this level, these two assets are more important
than a roomful of materials.
Many children "read" adults through their facial
expressions, voice modulations, and tone quality rather
than listening to and understanding the adult's words.
In fact, too much language with too little specificity
lacking concreteness -- will tend to slow down the
building of a positive relationship at Level I.
With body language, the adult can reassure, convey
security, nurture, redirect movements, intervene, motivate,
relieve discomfort, reward, accept, and praise the child.
If one relies only on words to convey these messages, one
is depending upon the preferred adult mode of
57
communication.
The adult may be missing a more
effective means to communicate with the child.
She often
operates at levels of communication that are far beyond
the child's ability to respond.
For example, an adult may use a soft
voice and calm tone in her attempts to
persuade the child, to touch a toy. This
gives the child one message. At the same
time, however, she may abruptly and
forcefully move the child's hand and
fingers to get him to interact with the
toy or object. This conveys another
message to the child that is different
from the first.
'Whereas her voice is
communicating acceptance and security,
her body movements and tone are communicating a harsher, "you'd better or else"
attitude. The child in this instance
may be confused and/or frightened by
the mixed message. The adult in turn
may be confused by the child's responses
-- resistance, crying, or lack of motivation and involvement -- when she had
intended to convey a gently supportive and
nurturing attitude.
Jeffrey, an Example of a Child Functioning at
Level I.
Four-year-old Jeffrey wandered aimlessly
around the room.
Occasionally he picked
up an object and shook it as he walked.
He had no verbal expressive language.
He cried when he was hungry and on a
rare occasion would move the adult to
the refrigerator when he wanted something
to eat or drink.
Jeffrey gave only
fleeting eye contact even to adults he
knew.
He did not discriminate between
familiar adults and strangers.
He would
go to anyone with his arms up to signal
that he wanted to be carried. At times,
Jeff was aggressive toward others --
58
biting, hitting, and pinching, but more
generally he ignored their presence.
Our goals for Jeffrey at this level
included helping him to become more
aware of his environment by making
things more enticing and pleasurable
for him.
For example, we tied colorful
ribbon streamers on small toys to make
them more inviting to pick up and look
at. We compiled a box of "noise makers"
and a box of objects and materials
that would provide different tactile
experiences that he could explore.
One
of our first break-throughs was when
he looked at and reached for the omn~­
chord as the teacher strummed the
instrument during music time.
Another favorite and rewarding time
for Jeff was swimming time. The teacher
got into the warm water of the wading
pool with him and moved his hands to
splash and clap.
(It was later learned
that Jeff never took a bath, but was
soaped and rinsed off in the shower.
After working with his mother, she accepted
the value of "bathtime" as a valuable
sensory experience and also learned
what a pleasurable interchange she would
have with her son in the water.) Sometimes, we would add bubbles to the warm
water and put them on his arms, back,
hands, etc., as we talked softly with
him.
Much of the work with Jeff involved
"motoring" him through different activities (physically moving his hands,
fingers, body, etc. through an activity).
This was particularly true when we engaged
in self-help tasks such as (un)dressing,
toileting, and eating. We encouraged
him and verbally reflected what was
happening as we physically moved his
arms, legs, etc.
Our goal was for Jeff
to become a more active participant in
the process of learning self-help skills.
We were not concerned with skill mastery
59
or with the chronological age
expectations -- what the normally
developing four year old was expected
to do. Rather, we were working for
some acknowledgement from Jeff that he
was aware of what was happening.
We worked long hours establishing a
trusting relationship with Jeff so he
would respond to us. We decided that
for Jeff (and other Level I children)
it was important to maintain the stability of personnel working with him.
One adult was given the primary
responsibility for being there to manipulate his environment to maintain a
positive interchange between Jeff and
his social and physical environment.
Jeff was sometimes aware of our presence,
although, at times, he may have chosen
not to show he knew we were there.
More often, however, he appeared unaware
of the adult and her whereabouts.
One
morning, he was sitting on the rug in the
play area while flipping the cord of a
pull toy. The teacher called his name
and touched him on his back from behind.
He was startled by her touch; stood, and
moved away dragging the pull toy behind
him. After this incident, we always tried
to approach Jeff (as well as any other
Level I child) only when we were in his
field of vision.
Children like Jeff do
not need to be startled, surprised, or
frightened by their surroundings -- especially when we are trying to build a
trusting relationship.
Level II:
Imitation
Definition~
As the child progresses from the
awareness level of development, attention is directed to
adults.
The adult becomes more a model for the child to
interact with and imitate.
' v
The child learns to explore
60
and master the basics in the immediate world around him.
The child is learning basic communication skills to
express his/her wants and needs.
Characteristics of Level II Behaviors.
The child's
environment and experiences are character·ized by structured, successful exploration.
Activities should lead to
building the child's self-confidence and organization.
Imitation involves not only the mechanical duplication
of the acts of other individuals, but also the concept
of what is expected from others and what, in turn, others
expect of the child.
The child's concept of self thus
develops in a social context.
Each individual's
behaviors and attitudes .become gradually shaped by the
dominant social influences to which the child is exposed.
Persons become both factors and products in the social
organization of which they are a part.
C~regiver
Role.
Techniques used by adults such as
redirection and reflection (discussed in the following
section on "tecl}niques") are of primary importance.
The
adult mainpulates the environment to enhance the imitative
quality of the child's behavior.
Tommy, an Example of a Child Functioning at Level II.
Tommy, eight years old, didn't participate
in activities unless "motored" by an
61
adult. He usually sat on the floor
with his legs crossed, drooled, and
played with his fingers -- jabbing his
right index finger into the palm of his
open left hand.
If left unattended, he
would wander around the classroom.
If
something caught his eye, he might grab
at it, or punch it, or throw it on the
floor.
He had no expressive verbal language. He cooed, smiled, laughed when
content and satisfied, and cried when
frustrated and/or angered. Tommy enjoyed
being cuddled, rocked, and "roughhoused"
by adults. He was generally inattentive
to others, but would occasionally acknowledge familiar adults by looking at them
and smiling.
Goals for Tommy included building on the
positive adult-child relationship. \~en
I approached him as he moved around the
room or yard, he would turn his head and
walk the other way or stop and look at
me (an encounter that did not enhance
self-efficacy in adults, especially his
parents). However, I was persistent.
I would say, "Here I come, I'm going to
get you!" and tickled him when I "caught
up with him." He laughed and giggled
and allowed his body to relax in the
interchange.
Other satisfying encounters would occur
in front of the mirror.
I laid the full
length mirror on its side and we sat in
front and touched it with our hands, felt
its coolness as we put our cheek next to
it, made faces, and fingerpainted with
shaving cream on it.
We soon observed that Tommy would watch
me as I gave help to another child,
moved about the room, etc. He began to
expect and want something from me and
our relationship.
For example, at times
he would stop walking, turn to look at me,
smile, and then giggle in anticipation
of our "chasing" game.
62
We worked on getting Tommy to imitate
our simple actions -- putting his hands
under running water to wash, stacking
blocks, pushing a car, putting colorful
and soft yarnballs into containers,
rocking and moving to music, etc.
As in Level I interactions, much of our
time together was spent in close contact
-- visual and verbal as well as physical.
Tommy and I spent much time stacking
blocks, emptying containers and filling
them again, sifting sand in the sandbox,
turning music boxes, etc. Throughout
our activities, I talked and verbally
reflected what we were doing, what we saw,
and what I thought he was probably feeling
at the time.
After many months, Tommy would sit with
me (usually on my lap) and watched as I
did something and then wquld participate
with me.
For example, I would get his
attention by shaking a colorful bag or
box that contained a box of crackers, a
slinky, or other object that I knew he
would want.
I ~..rould say, "Do you.want
to see what's inside?" (as I tapped my
chest with my right open hand).
"Do
you want?" He came to realize that I
expected him to give something of himself
(communicating "want" by tapping his
chest) in response to my giving something
of myself.
Level III:
Self-Initiation
Definition.
The child begins to initiate behaviors
in anticipation of outcomes.
Characteristics of Level III Behavior.
This stage is
categorized by a much more complex level of interactive
behaviors than the two previous stages.
Expansion of the
63
child's skills requires accepting responses, however
limited, and building new, more complex skills.
Through
new stimuli, the child can now develop new responses and
greater adaptation.
Caregiver Role.
demanding role.
The adult has a significant and
She acts as the predictable point of
reference for the child.
She encourages appropriate
responses and reflects success to the child.
At the same
time, the adult needs to provide security by maintaining
limits while encouraging exploration.
Through the rela-
tionship with their caregivers, children learn about
themselves in relation to others.
It is during this
stage that they are learning to use communication skills
to assert themselves in social situations.
Adam, an Example of a Child Functioning at Level III.
Six year old Adam acknowledged familiar
adults with a smile and reciprocated a
hug with a tight squeeze. He participated
in activities, but wandered away after a
few minutes unless an adult was there
to direct and maintain his interest.
Adam used a few signing approximations
to express his wants and needs -- for
example, "eat," "cracker," "milk,"
"drink," "go," "up," and "car." He took
the adult by the arm to make his wishes
more clearly understood. He imitated
simple actions of the adult and was beginning to learn about his environment -colors, size, actions, etc. Adam followed
simple directions and commands -- "come
here," "sit down," "stand up," "give me
the
, " "pick up .
. " He part icipated in verbally directed sharing
64
activities by giving each child a
cup at snacktime, gave a toy to
another child when asked, and used the
same paint container with another child.
While Adam used signs and words to
communicate his immediate wants and needs,
he usually needed adult questions and
requests to initiate communication to
exchange minimal information with them.
By providing structured modeling situations built on a trusting, positive
relationship, Adam learned to initiate
communications to exchange information
and share his experiences with others.
Our community outings would provide good
opportunities to enhance communication
intent. We would stop by a parked car.
In the initial phase I would ask, "What
is this?", "What color car?" and put his
responses together.
"It's a blue car."
As Adam learned more words, he would
point to things on his own. Then I
would ask and prompt his responses.
He
gradually learned to go beyond the
pointing to initiate interaction and used
his words, ''Look car," "big tree," etc.
Adam was responsive to the class activities, but was often easily bothered
by disruptive behaviors of other children.
During these times, he looked to the
adult to keep him involved in the activity
at hand and reaffirm her expectations of
him in the given situation. One day
Adam was working on sorting different
color cars when his table partner began
showing her frustration by chewing a
puzzle £ieee and making "chirping"
noises. When the adult attempted to
redirect the child, she began to cry
and upset the tray with all the puzzle
pieces. The adult reflected the child's
feelings:
"I know it makes you angry
when the pieces don't fit.
Let's try
the puzzles again.
I know you can
put it together. We can work together
65
if you need help." The adult, however,
could see out of the corner of her eye
that Adam's attention was beginning to
wander. She quickly reinforced him,
"Terrific, Adam. You put the red cars
in the red garage!" Then she moved her
attention to the other child and
motored her through the retrieval of
the puzzle. She occasionally smiled
at Adam and/or put her hand on his
knee.
Level IV:
Skill Expansion
Definition.
The child builds a repertoire of
behaviors that can be used in a variety of social situations.
With the development of this skill begins the
critical movement of association and assimilation within
the child.
Characteristics of Level IV Behavior.
develops an awareness of skill sequence.
The child
Whereas before,
control was basically extrinsic, and under the manipulation
of the adult, development of internal controls is
encouraged at this level.
The child gradually learns to
accept rules and regulations.
The child's expectations
of adults and other children are increased.
This level is
dominated by the need to develop competence to do and to
meet the expectations of others.
Caregiver Role.
The role of the adult is a flexible
one, at times functioning as a role model for the child to
emulate, and at other times, as an observer and one who
• 0
66
supports the child's efforts.
The child is provided
situations and opportunities where he can apply newly
mastered skills and concepts.
The adult is seen as the
person who solves problems and maintains the desired
routines and procedures.
Tobey, an Example of a Child Functioning at Level IV.
Five year old Tobey has more than one
hundred words in his vocabulary and is
learning new words each week.
He can
use word combinations and short sentences
to describe and/or exchange minimal
information with adults when he wants:
"Look at that," "black clouds," "pinetree," "can't reach -- too tall." He
calls some children and adults by name
and can physically show affection to
those he knows by smiling, hugging, and
kissing. He verbalizes preferences for
particular children. Tobey enjoys
classroom activities and participates
actively~
He shows pride in his accomplishments -- flails arms wildly when
his work is praised verbally.
Tobey, however, has difficulty establishing a positive relationship with
people with whom he is unfamiliar. He
needs adult assistance to transfer what
positive social skills he has learned to
new, unfamiliar situations. He 'l;vill
look to the adult or move physically
closer to the familiar adult and indirectly ask for reassurance and
direction, "Be careful -- ouch" (when
waiting his turn to climb on the bars),
"Use eyes -- look" (when sitting with
group of children during music. At
times he can be heard reinforcing himself
verbally.
Tobey is a child who knows his limits
67
and what is expected of him in routine
classroom activities. "Hands need to
be quiet." "Need to use words." "It's
time to work." At times he can be
heard reaffirming these rules to himself:
"feet (on) floor," "spoon-eat," "sit down, chair," etc. Tobey
has yet to internalize totally the
expectations of appropriate social interactions. The adult provides a stable
point of reference.
Sometimes just the
physical presence of the adult is enough
to remind Tobey of what is expected.
The adult facilitates the internalization process by verbally reflecting
the positive behaviors -- "Tobey is
looking with his eyes."
He is easily threatened and intimidated
by the presence of unfamiliar adults.
He attempts to initiate social interaction, but does so in a way that is not
easily accepted by adults who are
unfamiliar with him -- points to defective
light and says, "Need new light -- bulb
-- buy new," "grey clouds," (pointing
to sky) "bruis~ -- sharp pain (pointing
to finger) -- bush -- ouch!" When
confronted by the unfamiliar adult, he
reacts with physical aggression by
pulling hair, biting, scratching, and
reaching for the person's face.
When
reprimanded for this type of behavior,
he cries and/or looks dejected and tries
to hide his face.
This situation can
be avoided when the adult conveys the
expectations in understandable terms
to Tobey before the situation arises.
By "warning" him of coming events, changes
in routine, expected visitors, etc.,
Tobey is more able to make the proper
adaptation to meet the new situations.
As he experiences success and gains
confidence through these positive experiences, the adult's intervention need not
be as evident.
68
It is the adult's responsibility to
help Tobey to assimilate and transfer
the learned behaviors to the new, unfamiliar situations.
Level V:
Critical Judgment
Definition.
Children are under greater self-control
than at previous levels.
They learn to see their actions
as related to consequences (cognitive function).
Characteristics of Level V Behavior.
This stage is
characterized by intense interest in the roles of
others, in exploring consequences, and in the ability to
change rules and exert control.
Caregiver Role.
The adults help children understand
relationships between what they do and what happens as a
result of their actions.
This requires the adult to show
sensitivity to the child's feelings and a supportive
attitude when things go badly.
Eric, an Example of a Child Functioning at Level V.
"Zap! "
"Zap! It's the joker! The winner is
contestant number one!" Eric comes
bouncing into the classroom.
"Now Mrs. Richards," he says pointing
to the classroom assistant (not her name),
"Now it's your turn to spin the wheel,
69
answer the question, and win $10,000!"
When Eric carne to our class, he saw
everything as part of a game
someone
asked him to answer a question, do something, perform some task. If he was
correct he won "free time" or a token;
if he was wrong he didn't get anything;
he lost a little self respect, and quit
the game. It was difficult for Eric to
see the consequences as related to his own
behaviors. Rather, he viewed the consequences as controlled by the adult. For
example, if he threw his fork on the floor
or in the trash, the adult would not
allow him to eat; when he refused to get
dressed in the morning, his father would
exert his physical strength to dress
him, and when he hit another child, the
adult would "bench" him so he could not
play on the yard and was isolated from
others.
Our task in the classroom was to help
Eric see the connection between his
behavior and the consequences of these
behaviors so that he would eventually
stop and think about the consequences
before he acted. In short, our goal
was to show Eric that he had the power
to choose actions and that he needed
to think of consequences before he act~d.
He needed to realize he could control
his own behavior. For example, he
needed to keep his utensils; that if
he refused to get dressed in the morning,
he would have to come to school in his
pajamas, and that hitting another child
could cause a reaction by that child or
adult in supervision.
Just as children can be grouped according to their
differentiated developmental needs, the techniques used in
working with children also can be differentiated according
to the specific needs of children at each level of
71
teaching strategies to meet those needs in a developmental
context.
Moreover, caregivers need to know how to adapt
the techniques to the everchanging needs of their child.
Children at each level of development have certain
characteristics in common because of the presence or
absence of particular developmental skills.
Teachers can
adjust their teaching techniques to meet the needs of
children at a particular level and still be responsive to
individual differences among children in their class.
Teaching should consist of a combination of the teacher's
knowledge of each child, her own teaching style, and
teaching methods and techniques.
Communication Techniques
~Vhen
working with developmentally delayed children,
the adult's body and
vo~ee
are two valuable assets.
With
body language the adult can reassure, convey security,
nurture, direct classroom movements, motivate, intervene
in a developing crisis, decrease discomfort, reward,
accept, and praise.
Teachers often operate at communica-
tion levels far beyond a child's ability to respond and,
in so doing, force a child to rely on unintended messages
in body posture, tone, gesture, and expression.
Intentional use of nonverbal language can be an invaluable
technique, especially during the early levels of acquiring
effective interpersonal skills.
70
development.
Although a number of techniques to
stimulate, motivate, and control children may be known by
the parents and teachers, the purpose of the next section
is to highlight the distinctions among techniques that can
be utilized most effectively for each level of social
skill development.
Effective Techniques in Working with Children
Many techniques described here are already used by
many adults in helping developmentally delayed children
learn those behaviors necessary for social interaction.
Voice and body posture, redirection, reflection, and
structure are but a few of the techniques the adult can
find helpful in working with children in the classroom.
These methods of enhancing socially appropriate behaviors
in developmentally delayed children also can be learned by
parents.
In fact, many parents, on their own, have found
effective methods to build positive social interaction
skills in their developmentally delayed children.
Good techniques, however, will not produce results
if used when a child is developmentally unable to respond
to them.
On the other hand, any number of techniques will
produce the same changes if used at the appropriate time
in a child's development.
When the adult recognizes and
understands the individual needs of each child at any
particular time, she is more able to design appropriate
72
Teachers, and other adults as well, should be aware
of the effect their voice and facial expression have on
children.
Voice can inadvertently convey anger or
tension, and this might become a trigger for a child who
is close to acting out.
When a child is upset, a slow,
soothing tone lets the child know that the adult is not
upset and can be trusted to assist him/her maintain
control.
An empathetic, matter-of-fact voice communicates
the expectation that the child will respond as asked.
Some children will not respond even to a simple request
unless the adult conveys firmness.
Shouting or demanding,
however, is not effective.
The adult can hold the child's attention by varying
the volume and
~one
ofi
vo~ee.
Few children can resist
listening to the adult when her voice suddenly drops to a
whisper, or conveys a tone ·of surprise, excitement, or
suspense.
Verbal and facial animation, although used
successfully with all children, is most effective at the
earlier levels of development.
At all stages,
than negative ones.
po~~~~ve ~~a~emen~~
are more effective
Instead of saying, "Obviously you
can't do it!", the feeling can be rephrased to, "I:.et's
work together 'til you can do it yourself."
Instead of,
"Don't run in the room," the adult can express the same
message by saying, "Running is for outside," or, "You need
to come to the rug."
.
0
73
Just as children can be characterized as displaying
differentiated developmental needs, the management
techniques should be differentiated to meet the differing
needs and behavior styles of children.
The adult's
responses to a child functioning at Level I, who needs to
be aroused, should be different from her responses to a
Level IV or V child, who needs reassurances and verbal
interpretations.
For instance, adults working with Level
II children use a "controlled vocabulary."
By using a
limited language pattern to elicit a desired response,
the teacher provides a model which the child learns
through imitation and repetition.
For Level III, the
adult serves as an aid to organization.
While primarily
at Levels I and II, adult responses are essentially verbal
by Stage III.
By Level IV, the adult's focus is on helping a child
put his feelings into words, to look for relationships
between what he feels and what he does.
One might engage
a child with questions, "What happened?", "1.fuat are you
doing?", "How does it make you feel when he does that?"
A child may need this stimulation as a stepping stone to
eventually putting his feelings into words spontaneously.
There are a number of nonverbal techniques the
adult will find helpful in building effective interactional
skills in developmentally delayed children.
Children will
74
let the adults know their reactions through their body
responses -- rigidity, fear, withdrawal, restlessness,
or enthusiastic participation, attention, and enjoyment.
Whatever technique the adult is using, it is important
that she be sincere and sensitive to the signals she is
sending and to the responses she is receiving from the
children.
Eye QOntaQt is another communication technique used
by caregivers for all levels of social development.
The
amount of eye contact usually indicates how comfortable
a child feels with others.
With the child at earlier
levels of development, the adult may touch the child and
direct the child's attention toward the adult's face.
This can be a worthwhile technique for helping the child
attend to the adult's verbal direction or to help a child
who is learning to use sign language.
A few children cannot tolerate eye-to-eye contact
with another person.
Sometimes with such a child the
adult can avoid direct eye contact until she notices the
child beginning to watch her.
Often children use some
form of body contact when they begin to trust the adult,
but cannot bring themselves to show it overtly by making
eye contact.
In such instances, adult glances should be
brief, supportive, and nondemanding.
can be lengthened into a smile.
Gradually the glance
Finally the adult can call
75
the child's name and pause until the child glances back.
The adult needs to be certain there is a meaningful,
motivating activity as the vehicle for such exchanges.
Phy~~Qal
p~ox~mity
is probably the most powerful,
nonverbal technique a teacher can use.
It is effective
at all stages of education and can convey the entire range
of messages between adult and child.
An adult's body
should be used to convey positive messages to the child
-- encouraging, motivating, and caring.
Body contact and
touch from the teacher are used to nurture children
emotionally, to let them know they are doing a good job,
to calm them, and generally to tell children that the
adult likes being with them.
The type and amount of body
contact changes from Level I to V.
At the earlier levels
of development, the adult often keeps the child in psychological contact by touch and body contact.
Later,
contact changes to physical closeness or occasional
touching -- an arm around the child or a touch on the
shoulder.
Some children do not trust their environment, people,
or the teacher enough to tolerate any physical contact.
For these children, body contact triggers impulsivity and
acting out instead of calming them down or rewarding them.
Fo:t· such children contact has to be given verbally, in a
low key, and without much personal focus.
Nurturance for
76
such children can be provided through food, and physical
nearness.
A teacher's physical nearness at all stages can
control and encourage a child in an activity.
Physical
proximity communicates to children that the adult cares
about what they are doing and in this way often prevents
inappropriate behaviors before they occur.
By sitting
next to the most impulsive child in a group,, the adult
can prevent much acting out because she is in a better
position to react quickly before things get out of hand.
More importantly, through physical presence the adult is
telling the child she is interested and cares.
The child
feels more secure and does not need to act out to get
attention.
Especially effective at Level IV, physical
nearness conveys, "I am here if you need me."
Teachers should take care not to use physical presence
negatively.
\~en
near a child, the teacher should try
not to stand over him/her.
stoop, or sit.
Instead she should kneel,
Standing over a child tends to communi-
cate, "I am the 'boss.'"
When the teacher takes an
authoritarian stance, standing over children and
directing, the children will tend to react in one of two
ways:
passive (or passive-aggressive) compliance or
combative resistance.
Neither response is conducive to
positive emotional growth.
Cooperation and reciprocal
77
interchange is genuine when the child is responding out of
his own volition, not when the child is forced to do so
by an adult.
Structure
Cla~~noom ~~nae~an~
management technique.
~xp~e~a~lon~
and
onganlza~lon
Classroom structure refers to the
llml~~
~eh~dal~
well as the
can be utilized as an effective
for children in the classroom as
of activities and actual
of the room.
phy~leal
Used thoughtfully and select-
ively, structure can provide security by conveying what
the child can depend on.
It entails letting the child
know exactly what activities are planned and what
behaviors are expected.
Through the progressive levels,
the design and follow-through continues along a pattern
from chiefly physical to verbal in structure.
Structure conveys order, predictability, and
security.
When children learn through experience that
they can cope with what is planned, they can trust the
classroom to be a place for success.
If they have ample
opportunity to experience, respond, and successfully cope
in the classroom, constructive, comfortable responses can
be learned.
One aid for helping children organize themselves is
to designate certain areas of the room for certain
activities.
Children experience activity change along
78
with a change in physical environment.
This allows for
some physical movement between activities, and children
also learn what kinds of behaviors are expected and
appropriate for each activity and setting.
For example,
"We sit for juice at the table," but the "car stays on
the rug."
Physical boundaries also stimulate the aware-
ness of the physical limitations and changes present in
the "real world," where the child will be required to
sit and eat at a table and play in another area of his
home.
Structure should be different at each level of
social skill development.
For example, part of the class-
room structure is that children finish their "work"
before moving to. the next area or activity.
The Level I
child will probably be physically moved to make the
expected adaptations:
the Level II child responds to
adult prompting, and Level III, IV, and V children respond
to verbal signals and learn to anticipate change.
Teacher Control
The teacher's control of materials decreases as
children move through the progression.
the adult has almost total control.
In the beginning,
The teacher's role
is the provider of pleasant and satisfying experiences.
She brings juice, the meals, she plays the soothing Ornnichord, manipulates the puppets, moves the child's hand
79
in the water, paint, etc.
Children at Levels II and III
are given progressively more control of materials -learning to pour their own juice, helping to dress and
undress, interacting with play materials, etc.
Since
inner controls are not yet completely established, however, the teacher sometimes has to reinstate her control
of materials to insure positive and successful interactions.
By Level IV and V, children have sufficient
control so that they choose materials and activities in
planning and are responsible for the outcome of their own
behaviors.
Redirection and Reflection
Redirection and reflection are two additional
management techniques used in the classroom that parents
can learn to use to facilitate effective interaction with
their developmentally delayed child.
These factors,
although mentioned earlier, are described here in greater
detail.
R~din~e~ion
can be described as the process of
guiding a child back on task through alternative motivation.
It can be used to refocus a child's attention or to
avoid undesirable confrontation.
For a child at Levels
I and II, redirection is chiefly physical.
The adult may
change the child's physical activity patterns by moving his
80
arms and hands in a more constructive way or by presenting
the child with a toy when he is engaged in socially inhibiting or inappropriate activities.
Physical redirection
is combined with verbal redirection at Level III to help
the child to learn to respond to verbal cues.
For
example, during playtime, a child who had difficulty
controlling his aggression may become agitated while he
is involved in using his truck to run into blocks and
quickly builds a "road" and says, "This is the freeway for
your truck.
store."
Let's see if your truck can go to the
(The block road leads in a direction away from
the other children's building.)
Ret}i.ec.Ll.on is the practice of verbally stating what
a child is doing or saying.
It can also be a statement
of events.
It is one of the most valuable tools an adult
can use to:
1) interpret actions and events, 2) connect
language with actions, and 3) label feelings children may
be experiencing.
With the use of reflection, the adult can serve as a
mirror for the child -- reflecting success -- "Sean did a
good job walking through the tires!" -- describing
activities -- "Kara is making her building tall."
In
working with young developmentally delayed children, the
adult has the responsibility for teaching children to
communicate to others what they may be feeling as well as
81
interpret and "read" the feelings of others.
Labeling
certain emotions so they are more clearly understood by
others is an important task for child and adult alike -"You act like you are happy" (when the child is giggling
and jumping up and down), "Ryan must have felt angry to
hit you, and that didn't make you feel good" (when the
child throws a toy after being struck by another child).
Materials and activities should not become a means by
which the child can keep the adult at a psychological
distance or as a substitute for the adult's own participation in the reciprocal relationship with the child.
An
effective educational program for developmentally delayed
children involves the child's parents (or other primary
caregiver) as an active partner and participant in the
program.
The following section describes the types of parent
involvement that presently take place and that have
occured in the past teaching experiences of the author.
CHAPTER FOUR
PARENT INVOLVEMENT
A supportive professional environment and close
cooperation between parent and professional can lessen
stress and sadness which parents carry with them as they
strive to help their developmentally delayed child
function more effectively in the environment.
Parent
participation in the educational program helps children
transfer social skills from the classroom to their other
environment -- their home.
Planning for parent partici-
pation begins with information gathered at the time the
child is enrolled in school and builds through the initial
contacts with parents the first few weeks of school.
The staff (classroom teacher and assistant) considers the
parents' strengths, resources, problems, and limitations.
The parents' readiness to participate and hhe amount of
involvement that can be reasonably expected are also
considered.
The teacher encourages different types of
parent involvement for different parents, depending on
available information.
Types of Parent Participation
There are five specific types of parent involvement:
1) ongoing communication with parent and parent
82
83
conferences, 2) parent group meetings, 3) observation,
•
4) parent training, and 5) home visits.
No single program
is mandated or forced on the parents against their wishes.
Each single type or combination of types of parent
involvement can be valuable at any level of social skill
development.
1.
Ongoing Communication and Parent Conferences
Daily written communication is maintained with the use
of a "communication notebook."
The child's activities and
specific behaviors as well as descriptions of teacherchild interactions
especially those that focus on
teaching specific social skills -- are described in the
notebook and carried between school and home.
This
provides a line of ongoing communication between parent
and teacher.
At approximate bimonthly intervals, the
child's progress at home and school are reviewed.
These
conferences -- preferably face-to-face meetings -- serve
to facilitate the partnership aspect of the education
program.
The teacher and the parents share information so
that the child's development will be enhanced in both
settings.
2.
Parent Meetings
An organization of parents meets in the evening once
a month at school.
Parents of all the children enrolled
83
at the school are invited.
This program offers parents
an opportunity to meet and get to know other parents whose
children are enrolled at the school.
Fund raising and
social functions are planned and carried out.
In
addition, special meetings are sometimes held with guest
speakers who share their expertise with parents.
Some
parents feel more comfortable in this larger group of
parents.
This larger group can act as a transition until
the parent(s) feels comfortable and secure enough to become
part of a smaller group of parents with children with more
specific needs.
A group made up of parents of children in our class is
also available.
Parents sometimes identify with other
parents whose children resemble their own.
Information
about classroom activities and specific behaviors may be
shared, and programs and ideas to help individual parents
cope with certain stresses can be planned.
Feelings of
isolation that may be experienced by parents of developmentally delayed children may be introduced at these
meetings.
The group can develop into a support system for
parents feeling the stresses of raising a developmentally
delayed child.
3.
Parent Observation
Parents can learn about classroom programs and about
their own children
their strengths, weaknesses, and
behavioral cues -- by observing them in class.
Knowledge
85
of their typical response patterns can help parents to
alter their expectations and perhaps to respond more
effectively to their children.
For many parents, observing their child in school may
be their first opportunity to "back off" and see their
child a little more objectively.
It may also be their
first time to actually see their child interacting successfully with an adult or another child.
Observation may be
helpful to a ·parent who wants to see a particular
objective being implemented.
4.
Parent Training
The observation program is followed by parent
training.
Parents are .encouraged to interact with their
children in the supervised and structured school
setting. 4
Teacher behaviors observed, learned, and prac-
ticed in school by caregivers can be more readily
generalized to the home environment.
To facilitate this
process, the teacher models interactions with the child in
the classroom.
The parent is given opportunities to ob-
serve specific techniques of engaging their child and
discuss with the teacher what has been observed.
Then
the parent is encouraged to participate in the observed
activity with their child, and aspects of that
interaction are again discussed to enhance the learning
by the parent.
The parent is given time to feel secure
and comfortable with given techniques before trying
.
'
86
them at home.
Sometimes the parent seems ineffectual in
childrearing practices because of the lack of sufficient
knowledge to implement change.
The task is to provide
opportunities for learning and practicing effective skills
to suit the parents' own lifestyles and temperament.
The parent training experience enables the parent to
practice certain interaction techniques in the home that
were observed and practiced in school.
The child is thus
helped to generalize what he has learned in school to
to home.
Initially the focus is directed on helping each
parent gain specific knowledge about the child's behavioral
organization and style.
As the observation and participa-
tion process continues, specific issues of concern to the
parents such as options for themselves, childrearing
issues such as limit setting, responses to tantrums, etc.,
are discussed.
The amount of time spent in the classroom depends
upon the parents' time and interest.
It can be very
useful to the parent who feels the need to actually use
certain techniques and wants to learn them in a monitored
situation.
The feedback on the parents' progress is
immediate.
Occasionally a group of parents shares a specific
need.
.
0
In these instances, a training class with a
87
specific common goal, e.g., teaching basic sign language,
feeding techniques, and providing sensory experiences for
children at Level I can be organized.
5.
Home Visits
The teacher and parent can plan management routines
for the family to use at home.
Sometimes the planning
sessions are conducted in the home.
Parents may feel more
comfortable in their own home and it can be helpful for the
teacher to see the family members on their own ground so
as to better understand the home situation and dynamics of
interaction.
Implementing Programs for Parent Involvement
Implementing parent involvement programs ·necessitates
the clarification of special skills, strategies, and
sensitivities required of caregivers at each level of
social skill
acquisition~
When these factors are under-
stood and implemented by caregivers, a mutually rewarding
interaction between parent and child can be realized.
In this section, some of the skills needed by caregivers
are discussed.
Important characteristics of materials and
activities that differentiate the interactive strategies
for each level of development are also reviewed.
The developmentally delayed child does not learn
as effectively through observational learning as the
non-handicapped child.
Adults need to structure the
88
environment carefully to insure that appropriate
observational learning does occur.
Stimulation needs to
be provided in a natural context (usually during care or
play) and should vary at each level of social skill development.
During the early stages, stimulation is often
physical.
At later stages, verbal arousal and
(re)direction are effective techniques used by adults.
The number of materials used at each level of
development should decrease as the skills of the child
increase.
At the earlier stages, basic responses are
being learned which require many simple, manipulative,
concrete materials.
These individual skills become the
building blocks for higher, more abstract, and expressive
skills at later levels requiring fewer manipulative
materials and more complex experiences.
The context of interaction must be a shared
experience so that each person stimulates the responses of
the other.
The adult provides modeling and prompting
responses to sustain and accelerate the child's learning.
It may be important to discourage parents of handicapped
children from intense "teaching" and instead encourage
them to look, listen, and generally be sensitive to their
children's interests, abilities, etc.
89
Level I:
Awareness
Overall Goal.
The basic processes to be mobilized
in the child include:
awareness, trusting, responding,
and sustained attending.
Knowledge of the child's needs
and sensitivity to the behavioral cues are very important.
The adult needs to learn to take the child's cues -oftentimes very subtle -- and provide arousing and highly
motivating sensory activities for that child to move from
diffuse to selective responding.
Strategies.
Of all the levels, perhaps Level I
requires the most careful sequencing of each small step
in the learning process.
Each activity needs to produce
a satisfying result for the child.
Special Skills/Sensitivities.
1)
There is little
awareness of other persons and when awareness of others
is evident, it usually takes the form of physical contact
such as touching, verbal or vocal responses, or a scream
of frustration when a personal need or desire is unmet.
These responses are usually indicators of social awareness
and should be received by the adult as the signal to begin
teaching a new way to interact.
In the beginning of the school year
Ryan showed little recognition of familiar
adults -- he glanced in their direction
now and then. During playtime the adult
90
lifted Ryan in a prone position over
her head. When he gave eye to eye contact,
his gaze was met with a smile. He was
spun and gently "dropped" to the floor.
Ryan smiled, laughed, and showed by his
responses that he enjoyed the activity.
He began to show recognition of the familiar adult who gave him "rides" and would
jump and squeal to greet her.
His arms
were "motored" in an extended position
with the verbal cue -- "want up?" He soon
made and maintained eye contact with the
adult and extended his arms in anticipation
of "up." Presently Ryan is learning to
use the sign "up" when he wants to be
held and spun.
One morning about two months after the
start of the school year, Ryan's mother
came to school to observe. She watched
as Ryan looked at his teacher with a
smile when she asked, "Want up, Ryan?"
She later told the teacher that Ryan
seemed to dislike being held at horne -that he "wiggled and squirmed" when held
by his father. After mother's visit,
father began greeting Ryan with the same
sort of play (as mother had observed in
school) when he returned home each
evening. Ryan now anticipates his father's
return from work.
Father is expanding
his play repertoire with Ryan to include
"Row, Row" and jumping and "exercising"
to music.
2)
Young delayed children tend to respond
fleetingly to a stimulus, and then their attention is
lost.
They often perseverate or engage in restless motor
movements -- signaling that they are experiencing difficulty sustaining their attention.
By intervening and
redirecting a child to the next step in an activity, the
adult can increase the child's attention span.
91
Helinda put small cubes into a container
when given each cube one at a time and
prompted to drop the cube into the slotted
lid. Left unattended, however, she mouthed
the cubes, hit the container, stood, and
walked from the activity area. At home,
~1elinda lost interest in feeding herself
after the first spoonful.
She would
grasp the spoon; sometimes drop it; use
it as a hammer and bang on the table;
bring the empty spoon to her mouth, or
poke and leave her spoon "standing" in
her food. These behaviors frustrated her
mother who generally yielded and fed
Melinda.
Mrs. G. was given training -- along with
two other mothers -- recognizing skills
necessary for children to learn to feed
themselves. The three mothers also
talked about problems they were experiencing with their children at the dinner
table. Following one of these discussions,
Mrs. G. came up with the plan to sit
with Melinda at their kitchen table before her husband came home so she could
devote more attention to helping her
daughter learn to use the spoon to feed
herself.
She observed a few lunch periods
and learned to "cue" and "prompt;" use
verbal reflection while physically
"motoring" Melinda, and use key phrases
("hold," "spoon," "put in mouth," etc.)
to help Melinda through the process of
grasping her spoon, scooping the food,
bringing the food to her mouth, and repeating the sequence.
3)
To recognize the subtle responses from the child,
the adult must continually be aware of the child and the
situation.
This can be an exhausting and demanding task
for the adult.
'~
92
The teacher is working with Jeffrey.
She is encouraging him to grasp a bright
pink glove with little "faces" Velcroed
on the fingers.
She is holding him in
her lap and talking softly with him
while guiding his hands to touch the
glove. Jeff shows fleeting interest -looking for a few seconds then pulling
his hand away and holding it in the
air with his fingers extended. After
many minutes, the teacher removes the
glove from her hand and puts it on Jeff's
outstretched hand.
He looks intently
at the glove on his outstretched hand,
then moves his hand closer to his face
for a closer examination. The teacher
removes the glove to reveal his hand and
puts the glove on once again. Jeff is
able to sustain his attention on the activity for a number of trials -- each time
examining the glove and then his naked
hand.
The adult's actions in this instance are appropriate
in continuing to stimulate and lure Jeff even when she
could not generate the desired response until a later
time.
It would have been a mistake to stop such activity
because Jeff did not readily respond to the toys, nor
would it have been appropriate for the adult to force him
to hold the toy.
Level II:
Imitation
Overall Goal.
organized.
Emerging behaviors become more
Elements of structure, consistency, routine,
and predictability with many opportunities for exploring
and testing new skills are needed.
'
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93
Strategies.
The activities and materials used are
characterized by constant, yet stimulating routine that
is luring rather than demanding.
The child has learned
to respond -- the adult needs to assure that the responses
bring successful results.
what is success.
The adult sets the standard for
This standard should reflect the current
and emerging individual skills for each child.
Special Skills/Sensitivities.
1)
Children are
encouraged to develop preferences for simple choices and
express these preferences in productive ways.
Shirley is seated with five other
children at the lunch table.
She is
thirsty and repeatedly signs, "drink."
The teacher sees this and says, "Shirley
is thirsty. Do you want milk or juice?"
She places each carton in front of Shirley
-- just out of her reach.
She says (and
signs) again -- "Want milk or want
juice?" and touches each carton. Presently, Shirley needs to reach for the
desired carton whereupon the adult will
sign what she wants.
Shirley, however,
is not making the choice.
Instead she
sits and signs, "drink, drink." The
adult sees that the child is becoming
anxious so she takes Shirley's hand and
moves it toward the milk and says, "Shirley
wants milk.
Good choice!" She helps
her open the container and pour the milk
into Shirley's cup.
Learning to make a choice -- between milk
and juice, red or blue pants, apple or
orange, etc. -- the child is learning
that he is an individual who does have
power to influence outcomes.
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94
Some parents, however, find it difficult
to accept that their handicapped child
should have and can make choices. In
one instance, a parent felt that offering
choices made her "job" more difficult.
Mrs. S. felt that her son, David should
"do as he was told." Even though David
was capable of verbally expressing his
wants, he was offered no choices. As
David's skill level developed, he began
to verbally and physically express his
ability to make choices. Hrs. S. used
her "power" to win these "battles of wills,"
but was unhappy that "he always tries
to fight me." She approached David's
teacher asking, "Why does he do this?"
He never used to say no. Now I can
hardly get him dressed in the morning."
The teacher offered her support.
"I know
it is sometimes difficult to raise
children." She tried to emphasize that
his kind of behavior could be David's
way of showing and displaying a mind of
his own. Mrs. S. was encouraged to come
to school to observe David in the classroom
and also to join the parent group.
She
declined the invitation to observe, but
did. not come to a few parent meetings in
the evenings when she could find a babysitter.
During one group meeting the topic of
"power struggles" and "head to head"
confrontations was brought up. Mrs. S.
was quick to describe her situation with
her son and was surprised to learn that
other parents had similar experiences.
One mother described how she had dealt
with her daughter's negative behaviors
whenever it was time to prepare to leave
the house. Mrs. S. listened as the other
mother described how she learned to allow
her daughter to assist in choosing the
95
clothing she would wear and found that
the child would be more cooperative when
they dressed to get ready to go to
school, a party, etc. Mrs. S. accepted
the suggestions to give David choices.
She generalized to other situations when
she felt a "confrontation threatening."
2)
The adult is often a model for play as well as
for language.
She must enjoy the activities and communi-
cate that enjoyment -- enticing the child to respond with
success.
During small group time, the adult is
working with Geoffrey and Danny at the
waist high, plastic lined sandtable.
Danny plunges his hands into the white
sand and lets it sift through his fingers.
Geoffrey is hesitant to get involved
with the activity. The adult starts to
scoop the sand with a large plastic cup
and pours it into a larger bucket.
"Oooooh, sand. In bucket. Let's fill
the bucket!" She continues to scoop sand
and pour it into the bucket.
She places
Geo's hands on the scoop and says, "Now
your turn.
You pour." She assists him
in scooping and pouring and slowly fades
her physical intervention till he is
scooping and pouring the sand independently.
Adults sometimes find it difficult to respond with
enthusiasm to child activities.
~fuen
the child's
responses are highlighted to the adult, the activity can
become more meaningful.
3)
Through the relationship with the adult, the
child learns about himself in relation to others.
The
adult needs to carefully sequence experiences so that the
child sees himself as an individual with basic capacity to
96
affect the actions of others.
Children are at the beginning phases of skill
development.
The adult provides new experiences so that
the child sees himself as an individual with the basic
capacity to accomplish and master situations.
end implies successful participation.
Such an
Their successes are
defined by the adult(s) on individual terms.
It is "table time" and the children are
seated around the large kidney-shaped
table. The adult holds up large sheets
of colorful construction paper for all
the children to see. She shakes the paper
to make a noise and sways it before each
child's view.
"Paper, I have paper."
Noah reaches for the paper. The adult
say, "Noah, say, 'want paper.'" When
Noah repeats, "Paper" the adult .gives
him the paper saying, "Alright Noah! You
said paper!"
Level III:
Self-Imitation
Overall Goal.
The adult provides situations and
experiences where the child can expand and apply newly
mastered skills and concepts.
Strategies.
The activities and materials are charac-
. terized by successful participation in a variety of
activities -- in and out of the classroom structure.
Special Skills/Sensitivities.
1)
Children function-
ing at Level III respond to rules and routines.
The adult
is seen as the person who solves the problems and maintains
97
the routines and procedures which provide security and
external organization.
A well-organized room and activity
schedule are two ways that the adult can assist children
organize themselves.
For example, there is a certain place
in the room for every activity -- colored
chairs for circletime, rug for playtime,
desks for worktime, etc. The schedule
that is well organized and consistent is
another device that can help children feel
in control and experience success.
The transition from one activity to another
can be difficult.
The adult uses language -- information giving statements -to prepare children for change.
"Worktime
is almost over." Children are given a
few minutes to culminate the activity.
Then the adult announces, "Worktime is
over. Time to clean-up." Children soon
learn to internalize the structure and
feel secure in knowing 'tvhat comes next
and what behavior(s) is expected.
2)
The child at this stage has basic intellectual,
social, emotional, physical skills and an emerging sense
of self-worth.
Children need encouragement to use their
skills to assert themselves in social situations.
The classroom teacher planned trips to
the local hamburger restaurant to provide
children with opportunities to expand
their language and social skills in the
community setting. Adam has learned to
ask for certain food items during mealtimes
at school. 1\Th.en it is his turn to order
in the restaurant, however, he looks shyly
at the counterboy and mumbles unintelligible sounds. After much prompting he says,
"Want (h)amburg(er) peese" and displays a
card with a picture of a hamburger for
the counterboy to see.
98
"Who wants chocolate ice cream? Raise
your hand" is the request posed to the
children seated at the table in the
restaurant. "Who want strawberry? Daniel
you said you wanted chocolate. You will
have one flavor, chocolate or strawberry.
Which one?" Daniel could express what he
wanted when questions were directed to
him, but was confused 'tvhen directions and
questions were directed to the group as
a whole.
By intervening in social situations, the adult could assist him organize
and make the appropriate response(s).
Level IV:
Skill Expansion
Overall Goal.
The adult helps children regulate their
own behavior with decreasing need from outside controls
and thus expand the children's capacity to function
effectively in a variety of situations.
Strategies.
The organization of activities and
experiences can best be described as flexible.
There are
times when the adult will anticipate the child's need for
direction and assert authority.
At other times, the
adult needs to become involved in a managerial manner as
the child expands the repertoire of social interactions.
Special Skills/Sensitivities.
1)
The procedures the
adult uses in conducting activities are as important as
the nature of the activity itself.
In getting ready for
an activity children are offered choices of materials,
opportunities to suggest, and/or opportunities to follow
the suggestions of others.
They may help set up
99
materials.
During the activity there are opportunities
to share materials, talk about ideas, etc.
The adult
encourages participation and involvement with other
children as much as possible.
Children are encouraged to
express feeling responses to activities and materials.
In concluding the activity, children are recognized for
their participation and accomplishments.
The adult asserts her authority and says,
"Let's put all our work away.
It is time
to go on our walk." She gives the children
an opportunity to involve themselves in
choosing which.direction the group will
head. There are many "favorite spots"
enjoyed by the children on their community
outings.
"1Vhat do you think we will see
today?"
Jonathan:
please."
"I want to see the flags,
Tobey:
"I wanna cactus. Green c.actus.
Too tall.
I wanna too tall cactus."
Teacher:
"Paul, what do you think -shall we go see the cactus or flags today?"
Paul does not want to clean up and empties
the shape sorter once again. The teacher
says to the classroom assistant, "It
looks like Paul needs help." The assistant moves to help Paul and says, "It
looks like you need help.
I will help
you put the pieces in." She sings quietly,
"Hi Ho Hi Ho It's off on a walk we go,"
as they both fit the small pieces into
the container. They both join the group.
The teacher says, "You know, Noah did
such a good job of putting away his work,
maybe he should be our leader today.
He
can show us which way to go."
When the group reaches the street corner,
Noah turns right and continues on the
100
sidewalk, away from the flags and
cactus. Tobey hesitates at the corner,
"I wanna cactus" (as he squirms and flails
his bent arms excitedly). The adult
says, "I know you wanted to see cactus
today, Tobey, but Noah is our leader today.
Noah says, we go this way. Maybe we can
find another tall cactus ... Oh look.
There's a tall tree." Tobey looks in the
direction the adult is pointing and follows
as she continues on the sidewalk. The
adult says to the teacher in a voice
audible to the entire group, "You know,
Mrs. G., I think Tobey would make a good
leader the next time we go for a walk.
Then he can choose the way." Tobey replies,
"Next time." The teacher agrees, "That
sounds like a good idea. He can be our
leader on tomorrow's walk. He is doing
such a fine job following Noah today
that tomorrow he can have a turn to be
leader."
2)
The adult works as part of an interpersonal team
with other adults to provide verbal exchanges at a more
complex level for children to model.
The verbal exchange
between adults serves as an interpersonal model for
children and provides a dynamic model for Level IV and
also Level VI children who are learning effective skills
to enhance social interaction between themselves and their
social environment.
Verbal interaction between adults
can be used to neutralize a potentially disruptive
situation, stimulate interest in an activity, reinforce a
behavior and/or procedure, or provide sex role models when
the adults are male and female.
101
The group of children are becoming
disorganized during the transition from
"big table time" to "circletime." The
teacher has the materials for the next
activity in a box, but cannot get enough
attention from the children to begin.
She and the classroom assistant sit
with the children in the circle. They
pass the box between themselves, shake
it, and converse:
Assistant:
"What's in the box?"
Teacher: "Oh ... it is something we used
yesterday to make music."
Assistant:
"It sounds like there are
more than one music maker in the box."
Teacher:
"You're right.
for everyone!"
There is one
Assistant:
"You mean, one for Sadie;
one for Justin, and one for Johnny?"
She pretends to reach from the box to
each child as she calls each one by name.
One by one the children are enticed into
participation.
In carrying this skill to the natural environment it
is essential that the adults work together and discuss
their differences between themselves.
The overriding
message must be that both adults are in agreement of what
they are trying to accomplish and how they intend to
execute their plan.
Teamwork is essential.
Jon was a child functioning at Level IV
in social skill acquisition. He enjoyed
the company of others, especially adults.
He, however, tried to hug everyone who
acknowledged him and would sometimes kiss
102
their hand.
Jon's parents, Mr. and
Mrs. G. were not in agreement as to
the propriety of this behavior. Mr. G.
felt uncomfortable with his 7 year old
son's "overfriendliness." Mrs. G. thought
her son's way of greeting people was
"cute."
Mrs. G.'s view changed abruptly one
evening at the school open house. Jon
and his parents met other children and
their families.
Jon, in his usual
fashion, tried to hug and kiss everyone
with whom his parents stopped to speak.
This made both parents feel uncomfortable
(as Mrs. G. admitted later in a telephone conversation).
Mr. and Mrs. G. decided they wanted to
change Jon's way of initiating social
contact.
Since Jon was unable to discriminate when kissing was or was not
acceptable,. certain rules and guidelines
were followed.
The parents decided to
limit hugging and kissing relations, i.e.,
Morn, Dad, Grandma, and Uncle. Everyone
else wou~d get a handshake. At social
gatherings, Jon would stay with his Dad
who would model and "teach" him to shake
hands.
Level V:
Critical Judgment
Overall Goal.
Level V children have acquired the
ability to interact effectively in a variety of social
situations, but need adult assistance to recognize the
consequences for their behavior.
The adult provides the
model and helps the child weigh the possible outcomes of
his behaviors before the child acts.
103
Strategies.
oriented.
Activities and materials are reality
The task is one of enlarging children's
capacity to function effectively within the confines of
"ordinary" rules, constraints, freedom, and consequences.
Special Skills/Sensitivities.
1)
The adult guides
the children as they plan activities and determine their
own expectations, rules, procedures, and consequences.
The adult projects reality for the child, poses relevant
questions, makes suggestions, and assists children in
making constructive use of their abilities.
This particular week Chris is the
cafeteria monitor for his class.
It is
Chris's job to bring the snack items -sometimes juice and/or milk and crackers
or fruit -- from the cafeteria.
The teacher announces, "It is time for
snack.
Chris, when you have put away
the crayons you may go to the cafeteria."
Chris quickly puts the colors into the
box and then puts the box in the container
on his desk. He goes to the door and
is about ready to leave when the classroom
assistant stops him, "What do you need
to do before you pick up the food?"
Chris goes to the sink and washes his
hands. The assistant follows him to
the sink, "Chris, the apples and the box
of crackers are heavy. How will you
bring 5 apples and the box of crackers?"
Chris looks a bit bewildered at his
hands. The assistant helps, "I think
you need to bring the tray with you.
Then you can carry everything on the
tray."
104
2)
The child at this level of development values the
opinion(s) of significant adult(s).
This adult serves as
an appropriate model whose behavior the child can emulate.
Dean is having difficulty waiting his
turn to use the playground slide. The
playground attendant physically restrains
him till it is his turn to climb the
ladder to the top of the slide. Dean's
shoulders become tense and he looks at
the ground, awaiting her "release." The
classroom assistant walks toward the
slide and says, "Dean, is Mrs. Lesse
helping you to wait your turn?" She puts
his hand on the hand of the playground
attendant to signal she can let Dean go.
Dean looks toward the familiar face with
a shy smile. He stands and waits till
the girl in front of him has reached the
top of the slide. Then he steps on the
first step and continues when he hears
the classroom assistant tell Mrs. Lesse,
"Didn't Dean do a good job of waiting
till Christine got to the top." Dean
continues to the top of the ladder and
quickly bounces onto the slide with a wide
grin, showing obvious pleasure.
At the lunch table, the teacher and
classroom assistant are having lunch
with the children in their class. The
adults and children are comfortable and
enjoying their conversation about their
P.E. activities earLier that day. The
teacher notices that each time she glances
tmvard Lupe, Lupe is looking at her. She
gives Lupe a smile each time their eyes
meet. Lupe is imitating her teacher's ·
movements -- drinking her milk when the
adult drinks, using her fork when the
adult does, etc. After lunch period,
the teacher acknowledges Lupe's glance
and says, "That was a nice lunch, wasn't
it, Lupe?"
105
Case Examples
Up to this point, I have written in somewhat general
terms to describe a program to facilitate generalization
of learned social behaviors to the developmentally delayed
child's home environment.
The examples thus far have
been provided separately for each level to illustrate
statements defining the level.
The following examples will
provide additional credibility to the value of the parent
involvement program by providing specifics of how the
program was implemented -- in the case of parental
involvement with their children in school.
The two
case-oriented examples provided are of two very different
children at two different levels of social skill development and two very different parents.
The parents involved
are people with differing abilities, needs, desires,
educational levels, and parenting skills.
The parent
involvement program was adapted to meet their individual
needs as well as those of their children.
Joey B.
Joey is a five-year-old child presently functioning
at Level III in the skill progression.
He enjoys
coming to school, and greets other children and adults
by waving his arm and happily saying, "H ... Ha!"
("Hi!").
Joey uses sounds and some signs to express his
wants and needs.
He is eager to engage others in social
interaction -- often taking adults and willing children
by the arm, grunting and pointing, and trying to use his
limited sign language to communicate what he wants the
other person to do or
see~
At times, his behavior seems
disorganized and impulsive.
The lower part of his body
seems to be going one direction while his upper part is
not cooperating or is moving at a slower pace.
He often
stumbles and loses his balance in his excitement to get
from one activity to another.
When he falls, he picks
himself up and waddles to his original intended destination.
He rarely cries and seldom seeks adults for
comfort.
Joey is learning to be more independent in his
self-help skills.
dently
He insists on doing things indepen-
even when the task is far beyond his ability
(tying his shoelaces, zipping separating zipper, "helping"
another child to dress, etc.).
Joey's play skills include sequencing an activity
to completion (filling containers, putting rings on post,
etc.):
he manipulates and explores functions of objects;
he manipulates knobs, and understands simple cause-andeffect relationships.
play for a few minutes.
Joey engages in organized solitary
He demonstrates knowledge of
objects by their use and engages in functional play
activities.
'
t?
107
Joey lives with his natural parents and three older
brothers in a middle-class neighborhood.
The family
resides on a cul-de-sac off a quiet residential street.
Joey is allowed freedom to come and go in his immediate
neighborhood.
He is socially tolerated by older children
and generally plays unsupervised with a two-year-old girl
who lives next door.
Joey's parents have been told that "he is severely
retarded."
They expect little and so demand little of
their son.
They express amazement and wonder at the
things he tries to do.
They express concern, however, that
Joey is "not picking up speech."
They see this lack of
expressive language as Joey's main problem.
Our goals for Joey's parents included: separating
Joey from their label and accepting and valuing Joey as
a young boy with potential to learn instead of as a
diagnosis of "severe mental retardation;" recognizing
Joey's present skills as developmental; becoming more
sensitive to his developmental needs and learn effective
ways to interact with their child; and learning sign
language to help Joey acquire a basic communication system
to express his wants, needs, likes, and dislikes to others.
Our strategy for attaining these golas included:
encour-
aging Mr. and Mrs. B. to participate in our child
observation and participation program; encouraging them to
108
join our sign language for parents class; enhancing their
self-confidence as parents to provide guidance and
support to their child; and learning to use techniques
of structure and redirection to improve their management
of Joey's persistent behavior.
As with many other parents of developmentally delayed
children, Mr. and Mrs. B. had gone to a number of professsionals in their attempt to obtain a diagnosis of,
and reason for, Joey's condition.
At this point, they had
resolutely accepted the diagnosis given them by medical
and education professionals.
They had little idea,
however, as to what the diagnosis meant in terms of everyday interactions with their son.
They had a vague idea
of what Joey was not capable, but they had much difficulty
discussing his strengths and things he could do.
One of our first tasks as parent and teacher
partners was to write an informal inventory of Joey's
behavioral assets.
We made a list .in the general
developmental areas of:
communication, motor, self-help,
adaptive, and social emotional behaviors.
Mrs. B. had
difficulty in the beginning, but by the time we started
talking about what Joey could do in terms of self-help
skills, she was enthusiastically describing all that Joey
did at home.
At the end of the session she made a comment
about how she never realized how capable Joey was!
One
step in taking a more positive attitude toward a child is
to start thinking in positive terms of what that child
can perform.
We made certain that we were always specific in
describing Joey's behavior when we talked with his parents.
We concentrated on the positive
what Joey did -- and
we stated his learning deficits in terms of his needs.
For example, "Joey sure does a good job using his spoon to
feed himself.
utensils.
Now he is ready to learn to use other
He needs to learn to use his fork to spear
certain foods."
"Joey enjoys being around other
children, but he needs to respect the other child's
space.
He is learning to play and work alongside another
child.
We help him to keep his attention directed at his
own task and give 'help' when the other child wants his
assistance."
Mrs. B. came to school once a week.
observed her child.
At first, she
Joey would run to her and pull her
to whatever activity he was engaged in at the time, and
"show off" what he was doing.
She watched for about
twenty minutes, then she and I would go to the library to
talk about what she had observed.
Mrs. B. was hesitant
to actively involve herself in classroom activities.
It
was unnecessary to demand that she interact with her child
in class.
We talked frequently, and it was evident by
110
her attitudes and comments that she was satisfied and
happy, and feeling more confident in her role as Joey's
mother.
Through our discussions, I was able to direct her
attention to the teacher -- what she said and did and
Joey's responses.
Mrs. B. gained much insight into the
subtle·ty yet purposefulness of certain movements.
For
example, the assistant moved her knee behind Joey's chair
and put her hand on his shoulder, saying softly, "That
belongs to Jenny.
You need to give it back to Jenny"
-- thus avoiding a potentially disruptive confrontation
between Joey and the other child.
Mr. and Mrs. B. came to our noontime sign language
class (Mr. B. gave up his lunch hour once a week).
They
were quick to learn the basic signs and were eager to
learn more.
Their enthusiasm was a cohesive and guiding
force for all of us to learn and use more signs.
Overall, Mr. and.Mrs. B. typified a well-intentioned,
loving couple who wanted the best for their child, but
who did not know the specifics of caring and providing
for and supporting their developmentally delayed child.
Given a little guidance and insight, they were able to
follow through on learned techniques and skills to use
in their home.
In this particular instance, both parents were active
111
participants in the education program for their
developmentally delayed child.
The following example
typifies a situation that is all too familiar to professionals working with parents of exceptional children.
Jeffrey L.
Jeffrey L. is a three-year-old child functioning
at Level 'I on the developmental skill progression.
wanders aimlessly about the classroom.
He
At times he stops
to pick up a toy or object, puts it in his mouth, and
continues to walk.
known to others.
He does not make his wants and needs
He has been hospitalized on numerous
occasions because he has refused to take liquids and has
become dehydrated as a consequence.
He will feed himself
only when physically motored to hold food and bring it to
his mouth.
He shows definite food preferences and eats
primarily grains, fruit, and processed sweets.
Jeff has petit mal type seizures which are somewhat
controlled by medication.
him medication.
Jeff's mother is unable to give
It takes t"tvo people to orally administer
the medicine to Jeff -- one to hold him while the other
adult gives him the liquid Dilantin through a syringe.
Father refuses to help Mrs. L. give the medicine.
Conse-
quently, the schedule of medication has been adjusted so
that Jeff takes the Dilantin twice while he is in school
and once while he is at day care.
(Mother gets the
112
assistance of a day care provider when she comes to pick
him up at 6:00 PM at the child care center.)
Jeff lives with his natural parents in a lower ·
middle-class neighborhood.
His parents are in their middle
twenties and married directly after graduation from high
school -- a fact Mrs. L. proudly tells others as part of
her introduction of herself.
Jeff's father works two jobs
while Mrs. L. cares for Jeff and his older sister, age
five, and brother, age six.
Because Mr. L. works
weekends and nights, Hrs. L. has sole responsibility for
childrearing.
Our goals for the Ls include:
providing as pleasant
and stimulating an environment for Jeff as possible;
learning to read Jeff's "cues;" providing for Jeff's
basic needs by learning effective ways to help him learn
to feed himself and learn to care physically for him as
well; and making use of community support agencies to obtain services to help cope with the stresses and demands
of parenting.
Our strategies include:
encouraging Mr.
and Mrs. L. to participate in parent support group
meetings; encouraging Mrs. L. to come to school to learn by
"hands-on" experiences ways to interact in a positive way
with her son; learning to advocate for her son's as well
as her own rights by providing her with a list of
community institutions, agencies, and groups, as well as
. '
113
encouraging her to ask for help from Regional Center; and
encouraging her to use her family as a support system.
Mrs. L. 's family is very supportive.
Her youngest
sister, in particular, is all too happy to help her sister
by babysitting.
She is instrumental in providing care for
Jeff's sister and brother on Saturdays.
She spends time
playing with them and taking them on walks to the
playground.
At times, Mrs. L. 's sister keeps Jeff "out of
mischief" while Mrs. L. spends time with her other children
when they need their mother.
Her sister, however, is
fearful of Jeff and keeps her distance from him, as he has
bitten her.
Earlier, Mrs. L. 's normally developing children often
expressed resentment of their brother.
I alerted his
Regional Center counselor to the family's need.
Jeff's
counselor and I discussed the possibility of after-school
day care for Jeff, and I also encouraged Mrs. L. to ask
for assistance.
The classroom staff helped by searching
for appropriate day care settings.
After just a few short
weeks, and (un)official "string pulling" by the L. family
counselor, he started an after-school program.
This
helped to free Mrs. L. to devote more quality individual
attention to her other two children while not having too
many guilt feelings about time not spent with her
114
handicapped child.
Mrs. L. still needs help obtaining assistance from
community support agencies.
Once she gets to the indi-
vidual office and sees the individual in charge, she is
more able to advocate for her son's needs.
She still has
difficulty, however, advocating for herself.
Mrs. L. was reluctant at first to come to our parent
meetings.
After she was given respite hours of baby-
sitting and after I offered to pick her up, she could not
decline the invitation to join us.
Later in the semester,
she was brought to the meetings by another parent and
would ask me for a ride when that parent could not attend.
The meetings became a valuable time for her.
her with an identity.
It provided
It gave her an opportunity to be
with other parents and to listen to their problems.
She
realized that she was not the only one experiencing
difficulties rearing her child.
It took a long time before Mrs. L. actively
participated in discussions.
It was very encouraging when
she volunteered to bake cookies and openly, and seemingly
comfortably, talked with other mothers about her recipe.
In general, however, it took her a while before she showed
she was comfortable making eye contact, interjecting her
examples, and opinions, and experiences, etc., in these
group situations.
115
I met and worked with Mrs. L. before she came to
school to observe her child.
We talked about our school
program on the phone and during our parent meetings.
When talking with her, I tried to describe the activities
and events in positive, concrete terms -- giving specific
examples of Jeff's behaviors during specific activities
during the school day.
~fuen
invited to come to school on a regular basis
to observe arid take part in our school day, she accepted
without hesitation.
Once a week, after walking her two
older children to school, Mrs. L. would use public transportation to get to school.
She would observe and interact
with Jeff under our direction for one and one-half hours.
Initially, she seemed uneasy and nervous.
The first
few times, she knocked quietly at the classroom door, and
slowly opened it.
She peeked her head in and asked for
permission to enter.
greet and welcome her.
~.Je
made a special effort to openly
Jeff, on the other hand, made no
outward signs of recognition of his mother.
Mrs. L. greeted Jeff upon entering the room, "Hi,
Jeffrey."
She made no attempt to confront him and
physically greet him.
It seems she had abandoned any hope
that Jeff would reciprocate any attention she gave him.
I carried Jeff to where his mother sat and tried to model
interaction for his mother:
"Look.
Mommy is here."
I
:[Lli6
moved to gain face-to-face, gaze-to-gaze acknowledgement
by playing "peek-a-boo" and rocking him while carrying him
in an upright position.
Jeff and I played with the Jack-in-the-box.
I held
his hand on the handle and exaggerated my voice when the
clown popped up.
Throughout the activity, I reflected
verbally to him what we were doing:
"Hold, hold, turn.
Listen to the music.
Oh, oh, here he comes.
my!
He popped up!"
What happened?!
Pop!
Oh
I removed Jeff's shirt and rubbed lotion on his
shoulders, back, stomach, arms, and hands as I verbalized
what I was doing.
Each time he looked at me, I smiled,
praised, and reassured him with a gentle hand on the
shoulder or pat on his back.
Later, Mrs. L. and I talked about what she had
observed.
Her perceptiveness grew as she observed and
asked questions.
When it was her turn to interact
directly with her child, I made certain I was near.
In
the beginning, she imitated almost word-for-word,
intonation-for-intonation, my words and some movements.
As she gained more confidence and became more comfortable,
she was more spontaneous.
The other day, Mrs. L. called me on the phone after
school.
She told me how she enjoyed coming to school.
She was also surprised, pleased, and a little confused as
117
to how much Jeff could do in school.
She was especially
confounded because, in her words, "He doesn't try to bite
you?!"
We talked about Jeff and how he used alternative
means of communication to express his wants and needs.
She recognized when he was obviously content, but could
not read his cues of anger, frustration, and impending loss
of control.
When Mrs. L. decided it was time for Jeff
to eat (play with a rattle, etc.), she would force her
attention and the activity on him, regardless of his
response.
Through the ensuing weeks, Hrs. L. learned to display
and communicate a warmth to him and give of herself to
him.
She learned to recognize certain cues and intervene
before Jeff became angry and frustrated.
As she became
physically closer and more able to show physical nurturing
to her son, she was more able to care for his health needs
also.
As a positive, trusting relationship developed,
Jeff was more willing to accept her physically motoring
him through feeding, washing, etc.
At times it was a
struggle to get him to try new foods and textures, but
Mrs. L. learned to rely on her gains and building on their
trusting relationship.
For example, trying to get Jeff to
put different textures of foods in his mouth was a very
demanding and emotionally draining time for both mother
and child.
Instead of forcing the new foods in his mouth
and engaging in "hand-to-hand combat," mother learned to
118
take and accept small steps toward Jeff's acceptance of
new foods.
For example, she found it more successful to
give only a small amount of the new food, than give him
one of his favorites as a reward for trying the new;
she found he was more accepting of foods when given from
her hand rather than from a utensil; she found she could
mix some foods in chocolate pudding, then slowly phase out
the pudding, and she discovered she could "hide" some
foods between slices of bread to make it more acceptable
to Jeff.
Mrs. L. also learned that skills were global and that
the same behaviors could be addressed in different
activities throughout the day.
For example, she learned
that aspects of eating skills are not restricted to mealtime, but rather, sensory activities, and exploring
texture, and holding utensils could be practiced throughout
the day.
More importantly, she realized and then
demonstrated that the relationships built in one situation
can be carried over, generalized, to other situations.
She sat with Jeff and spooned beans, rice, cornmeal into
containers, fingerpainted, played with toys that encouraged
Jeff to hold, turn, etc.
I took every opportunity to reinforce Mrs. L. and
reflect to her how much she looked as if she was enjoying
her time with her son.
As Mrs. L. gained more confidence,
.11'9
we began to withdraw and limit our direct support.
It was important, especially in this instance, to avoid
her becoming too dependent on our presence, direction, and
invo 1 vemen t .
Sometimes teachers are confronted with parents who are
unwilling and/or unable to take an active role in the
teacher-caregiver partnership.
These parents do not
answer phone calls or notes, do not attend school functions
such as open house, school carnivals, etc.
They come to
school only to enroll their child and when no transportation can be provided, as when the child is too ill to stay
in school.
In these instances, it is sometimes easy to
blame the parent(s) for all of the child's failures and
shortcomings.
It is more helpful for the teacher to keep
her ego uninvolved and to accept the situation as it is.
In such situations, the teacher needs to be persistent
and work toward increasing levels of parent participation.
Some parents may feel threatened when their developmentally
delayed child's teacher tries to contact them and asks to
work with them.
Past experiences might have taught them
that a phone call from school means "bad news."
If they
are treated to "happy grams" telling them of the good
things about their child, they may become more willing to
accept the calls and notes from their child's teacher.
Adults working with developmentally delayed children
120
need to accept that not all parents will readily accept
their assistance when it is offered.
Yet implicit in all
the work with parents and children is the need for the
school staff to inform, to support, and to be accessible
to parents.
Parents' ability to participate and grow
depends on how comfortable they are with the staff, how
confident they are with the program for their child, and
how confident they are in their own role as parents of a
delayed child .
• tl
CHAPTER FIVE
SUMMARY
The primary purpose of this paper was to develop and
present a model for the teaching of social interaction
skills to developmentally delayed young children in
school, and to facilitate the transfer of these skills to
other settings.
The model organized along a developmental
progression of behavior consists of five levels of
social interaction behavior.
It draws upon theory and
research in the areas of child development, learning
theory, child-caregiver interactions, and transfer of
learning GOmbined with my experience in teaching
developmentally delayed young children.
The model empha-
sizes the importance of parental involvement in the
process of the child's acquisition and, especially of
generalization or transfer of social skills from the
classroom to the home or other environment.
Focus on Social Interaction Behaviors
The education of handicapped children has for many
years been focused on developing intellectual abilities.
In the past decade, however, it has become increasingly
clear that the emotional status of developmentally delayed
children, as well as their ability to interact
121
122
with others, are major prerequisites for intellectual
development.
It is recognized that handicaps tend to
become cumulative -- extending to areas beyond those
affected by the handicapping condition, and resulting in
secondary overlays of disability.
This is clearly evident
in young developmentally delayed children who have
difficulty in learning the most basic skills because of
deficiencies in social/emotional development.
It has been demonstrated that social interaction
skills can be taught to handicapped young children.
The
critical issue is the recognition and acceptance of
teaching these skills in the everyday interactions with
children.
Research and Theory
The review of research and theory has emphasized that
development is an interactive phenomenon.
Children are
active initiators and responders who exert influences on
others and on the events which affect them.
They are
not merely passive recipients of influence from others.
What they do will be influenced by their physical make-up,
by past events in their lives, by their growing perceptions
of who they are, and by the nature of those with whom
they interact.
This view does not deny the general
dependency and/or helplessness of some severely handicapped
11..23
children.
However, even the most severely handicapped
children can be more or less active, more or less responsive to others, more or less demanding, and consequently
influence the way others respond to them.
Social Skill Acquisition
Educators are continually faced with the task of
providing appropriate education services for young
children with special needs.
The design of education
services by necessity demands a synthesis of research
findings with service delivery systems that meet the needs
of the parent-child dyad.
· I have organized and presented a progression of
social skills that may help teachers and parents to understand the development of appropriate social interactions
between the young delayed child and caregiver.
This
progression combines a developmental approach built on
sequences of normal development of social interaction and
teaching processes for skill development.
The model based
on social learning theory does not isolate the developmentally delayed child from the mainstream of "normal
experiences;" it uses normal development as a guide; it
emphasizes the day-to-day social interchange between child
and adult as an integral part of curriculum to assist the
child in assimilating experiences designed to encourage
124
mastery of developmental milestones, and it enlists the
caregivers as partners in the education of their
children.
Parent Involvement
Education for young developmentally delayed children
is conceptualized as a complex network of services to t'b.e
child and family, emphasizing their active involvement.·
It is apparent that professionals can no longer ask the
question, "Should we involve parents actively in the
education process?" but rather,
can be established?"
"~fuat
kind of partnership
Clearly, a rewarding partnership is
a positive, active, and meanin;gful one for all those
involved.
A meaningful parent-professional relationship
relies heavily on the professional's ability to understand
parents and to communicate effectively with them.
Parents have often represented an untapped resource
for professionals who work with exceptional children.
Because parents are capable of making valuable contributions, their involvement with professionals is important
to the development of the handicapped child.
Despite a substantive body of data reflecting the
building of competencies, knowledge about social interaction behaviors of young handicapped children and their
caregivers is limited.
Unfortunately, the field of early
125
childhood/special education cannot await a "perfect"
theory before cautiously applying newly acquired information or perspectives to the education process.
This paper provides a theoretical framework for the
early childhood/special educator concerned with enhancing
social interaction behaviors in young developmentally
delayed children.
In particular, the focus is on under-
standing interaction as a reciprocal process for
delineating an approach to early social skill learning.
CHAPTER SIX
IMPLICATIONS AND SUGGESTIONS FOR SPECIAL EDUCATORS
In the last decade, American society has become more
democratic by eliminating some of the barriers which had
prevented handicapped persons from full participation.
However, changing laws do not change customs.
Nor does
it equip persons with severely limited skills with the
means for achieving social participation.
The education
system has been given the opportunity to make broad
changes in the customs of American life regarding handicapped individuals.
To actualize these changes, the
educational curriculum has been broadened to include the
most basic skills of human adaptation.
Physically moving
around and making contact with people and objects in the
environment, taking care of one's own biological needs,
and communicating with others are becoming crucial
components of educational curricula for handicapped
children.
As objectives in education, such basic skills are new,
and they bring to light certain ironies in contemporary
special education.
We are in the midst of the new era of
federally legislated, mandated special education which
provides the greatest opportunity for special children, but
. v
126
127
we operate with conflicting processes.
Our goal is to
help children with special needs, but most of the time we
do this only when they fit a given category.
We are
fixated on their "schooling" when that is only a part of
their education for life.
The educational experience in itself should be
meaningful to the child and have relevance for his or her
life.
But this is only half the story.
Schooling is more
than a holding operation where the child grows up.
It
should be conducted to maximize the quality of the child's
whole life.
It is said that many students live in spite of
their schooling rather than because of it.
With the
handicapped student, the opposite is more likely: . the
quality of their entire life experience will be determined
to a significant degre-e by the astuteness of their educators.
For certain special persons, the quality of training
will determine the potential for employment or even be
critical in the decision as to whether life will be in
an institution, protected care setting, or an independent
living arrangement.
As any teacher knows, the real quality of special
education will not be found in the legislative code
numbers or statements of purpose.
It will be arrived at
by first examining the lives of children and then
reflecting on how our teachings have enhanced their
128
existence.
Effective curricula for developmentally delayed
children cannot be developed by systematically synthesizing
all the currently available curricular efforts.
Curricula
cannot be constructed by translating laboratory research
and theories into educational procedures.
Neither can
curricula be constructed by producing exhaustive
inventories of environments and by postulating the skills
which might be required to function in·those environments.
Nor can curricula for developmentally delayed children be
found nestled in the writings of developmental theorists.
Curricula for individual children must ultimately be
developed within a relationship between teacher and
student.
The teacher ultimately must see inthe child's
behavior seeds of the skills which will lead to increased
social participation.
There is considerable discussion, debate, and
controversy in the educational community as to what
constitutes a sound program for developmentally delayed
children.
One large group of teachers involved in special
education focuses exclusively on the acquisition of
specific skills.
Competence is regarded simplistically
as the addition of new skills.
This deficit approach to
education prevails in many special education programs.
There is a tendency, when a specific deficiency is
1.2'9
identified in a child, to prescribe a restricted,
compensatory program and to define goals that are equally
restricted.
At first glance, this appears to be a sound
rationale for prescriptive teaching for youngsters with
developmental problems.
There is a growing concert).,
however, about the increasing tendency toward passivity in
many of the children as well as certain superficiality in
the way they relate to people and things in their environment.
Curriculum should be envisioned as a generative
process, not a set of fixed activities.
Curriculum
evolves out of the interaction between students and
teachers.
In drawing upon the wisdom of Dewey and Piaget,
curriculum begins with the student's own activity and
evolves as the teaching, using his or her knowledge of
the student's particular repertoire of skills and
information, extends that repertoire.
Thus, the student
may learn to generalize existing skills to new situations
or acquire skills within this interactive process.
The
teacher's role is clearly that of a facilitator,
arranging the environment to provide opportunities for
learning and capitalizing on the student's own activity
within the environment to broaden skills.
Moreover, we tend to confuse "equal opportunity" with
13:0
"equal attributes."
Sometimes we mistakenly assume that
all persons afforded comparable opportunities to grow will
emerge with equal achievements.
If some have achieved
less, we assume somehow the quality of the opportunity is
at fault.
We are uncomfortable with the notion that
achievement is
relate~,
and environment.
in part, to differences in ability
Similarly, many of us find it hard to
believe that teaching styles need to be modified to the
individual child's learning style.
At times we may also
overlook the individual caregiver's style and positive
features of the caretaking relationship.
And now, I turn
to one of the central points of this paper.
For many years, the professional people with whom
parents of developmentally delayed children have come in
contact have, by the nature of their profession, been
primarily interested in the child and his problems.
Educators have tended to focus on the child and have
considered the parents' feelings and attitudes of importance only in as much as they affect the child and his
development.
This orientation needs to change.
Although the notion of professional "burnout" has
become quite prominent in the literature, perhaps not
enough attention has been afforded to parental "burnout."
A further extension of our theoretical framework, from
the notion of the dyad to the triad -- to the family --
131
is needed to better understand the total nature of social
learning by the developmentally delayed young child,
applied beyond the classroom environment.
Moreover,
families do not exist as units independent of other social
organizations within society.
It is accepted that families
need to be viewed within their social context, and recognition of the role of the school, representing the values of
the community, as a modifier of the family modes of
interaction is necessary for an adequate discussion of
early social skill acquisition.
I regret not being able to
address this issue at greater length in this paper.
Parent/family involvement is characteristic of early
intervention programs for handicapped infants.
While the
specific nature of parent involvement varies across
program models, a large percentage of programs specify a
role for parents in the instruction of their child.
This
parental focus is somehow dimmed, however, when the child
starts school.
The program presented in these pages
suggests changes in educational strategies and emphasis.
The concept of training is expanded to· include the child
and his caregiver(s) as behavioral targets are embedded in
the daily activities of the youngsters.
What we have learned from our intervention efforts
in the past is that the limits of human plasticity have
yet to be reached.
What is also clear, however, is that
132
this individual plasticity is a consequence of contextual
plasticity -- that is, the ability of caregivers to adapt
to the needs of the developing child and for school and
horne to provide a degree of consistency in adult responses
to the child.
As those needs become better understood, our
efforts with children and their families will also
improve.
Development is an organized, complex system.
Fortunately, its complexity is also its virtue.
"The many
paths to happiness in life offer us as many opportunities
for education and remediation" (Bricker, p. 157).
FOOTNOTES
1
"Caregiving" refers to the quality interaction
between adult and child during caretaking situations at
horne and in the school setting.
In this paper, "caregiver"
refers to teachers as well as parents or other primary
caregivers.
2 For the sake of brevity, "he" refers to the child of
either sex.
For the sake of brevity and because currently
the majority of early childhood/special education teachers
are females, the "teacher" in this paper will be referred
to as "she."
3Management techniques and communication patterns
are discussed in the section entitled, "Helpful Techniques ... "
The adult's role is addressed in detail in the
section on parent involvement
4Although the invitation to participate is extended
to both parents, more often one parent -- usually the
mother -- participates in the parent training program by
observing her child in school.
133
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