Promoting Collaboration and Conversation in Young Students with Academic and Social Delays During Small Group Instruction

The purpose of this study was to evaluate how to maximize small group academic instruction by including opportunities for children to earn access to preferred items and activities by collaborating with a peer to earn tokens for correct behaviors, as well as opportunities for conversation around preferred items. A multiple probe design across dyads was used to evaluate the effectiveness of a PTD procedure for teaching young children to name novel sight words. In addition, the effects of an SLP procedure on conversation initiations and responses were assessed within the context of A-B designs. The results showed the PTD procedure was effective in teaching participants in Dyad 1 and Dyad 2 to name sight words. The SLP procedure was effective in increasing both conversation initiations and responses between trials for participants with typical social skills. Participants with social delays engaged in few conversation initiations, but displayed a high rate of responding to peer initiations