Children with developmental disabilities are at an increased risk for involvement in bullying, and children with autism spectrum disorders (ASDs) may be at particular risk because of challenges with social skills and difficulty maintaining friendships, yet there has been little empirical research on involvement in bullying among children with ASD.…

This article surveys the past 35 years of social interaction research relating to autism. Ways in which understanding social deficits in autism has influenced attempts to analyze and ameliorate problem behaviors are discussed, and emerging concepts relating to social interaction are examined, including the importance of maintaining social…

Three children with autism from a self-contained elementary special education class participated in daily free-play sessions with 15 nondisabled peers, who were sequentially individually trained in appropriate interaction skills. Generalized interactions between students with autism and nontrained peers began in all three groups after the…

With two autistic boys as subjects, a teacher prompt and praise procedure was applied sequentially across dyads composed of a subject and a nonhandicapped peer (n=8, aged 11-12). Following social interaction training with several nonhandicapped peers, one subject showed across-peer and across-setting generalization, while the second subject did…

This study examined the impact of play activities, teachers' predictions of children's sociability, and intervention fidelity variables on levels of interaction between three preschoolers with autism and their nondisabled peers. Results indicated that social reciprocity and peer effort correlated highly with children's levels of social…