Effectiveness of Coaching Socially Withdrawn/Isolated Children in Specific Social Skills

Abstract

Abstract Ladd demonstrated the effectiveness of the social learning method for increasing social interactive behaviour of ‘mildly’ withdrawn/isolated children with their peers. The present study replicated Ladd's investigation with two important differences: 1. the subjects were ‘severely’ withdrawn/isolated children, and 2. the training sessions, unlike Ladd's fixed time schedule, continued until the subject's level of performance reached the level of ‘average’ peers in each targeted social skill. The findings indicated that the social learning method increased social interaction of ‘severely’ withdrawn/isolated children with their peers. However increasing their rate of behaviour in targeted social skills to the level of performance of their ‘average’ peers required approximately four times as many sessions of training as Ladd conducted with ‘mildly’ withdrawn/isolated children.