The Effects Of A Friendship Development Program On The Social Interactions Of The Preschool Children With Special Needs

A multiple probe design was used to examine the effects of Friendship Development Program (FDP) delivered by peer tutors on increasing social interaction skills of the children with special needs Seventeen children participated in the study, four of them served as "target children" and rest of them acted as "peer tutors" Peer tutors were trained on how to use the FDP in small group teaching arrangement via direct instruction Peer initiated approach was used by peers to deliver FDP instruction The needs of the children and the opinions of the teachers were considered when developing FDP Results showed that peer tutors reliably used FDP on teaching social interaction skills to children with special needs Also an increase was observed on the social interaction skills of the children with special needs Furthermore, the data indicated that target children maintained the acquired social interaction skills 3 and 4 weeks after instruction to certain extend and generalized the acquired skills across other peers in their classrooms