Using role playing during physical education provides limitless opportunities for intervention and for the demonstration of personal and social qualities. The purpose of this article is to provide easy steps for implementing role playing as a strategy to teach social skills to students in the physical education setting.

To support children with autism in inclusive classrooms, schools are increasingly utilizing paraprofessionals. However, research suggests that paraprofessionals often lack sufficient training and may inadvertently hinder the social interactions between children with disabilities and their peers. This study used a multiple baseline across…

While both positive and negative peer interactions have long been a focus of scientific interest, much less attention has been given to children who tend to refrain from interacting with peers. This volume brings together leading authorities to review progress in understanding the development, causes, and consequences of shyness and social…

This activity book offers students in grades 3-7 creative, imaginative ways to explore what manners are and are not, why they matter and how to use manners to get more from life. The book is divided into nine chapters: (1) "What Are Manners?"; (2) "Why Do Manners Matter?"; (3) "Getting to Know One Another"; (4)…

Strategies for teaching social skills to students from diverse cultural groups are described. Teaching social skills accepted by the majority culture empowers students to function successfully in inclusive society. It is a proactive approach to managing behavior for culturally diverse adolescents with behavior deficits. To teach these skills…

This review presents a brief history of literature on assertion. It then concentrates on literature published after 1970. The review is divided into two areas: popular books, subdivided into introductory works and more specialized works, and professional books. Materials cited are reviewed and evaluated. (Author/JLL)

Examined relations between social-cognitive skills, aggression, and social competence using teacher questionnaire and tabletop tasks with preschool and kindergarten children. Found that generation of forceful solutions in a traditional social-problem solving task and performance on the false belief tasks were significantly related to social…

Ways to promote generalization of social skills of students with learning disabilities (LD) are considered. Approaches include: sequential modification, introducing naturally maintaining contingencies, training sufficient exemplars, training across settings, training loosely, using indiscriminable contingencies, programming common stimuli, and…

This paper presents a study designed to determine if providing information to primiparous mothers about the behavioral characteristics of their infants would affect reciprocity in mother-infant interaction. Thirty married, Caucasian, middle class mothers of healthy, normally carried and delivered 48-hour-old first-born infants served as subjects.…

A multifaceted model to promote peer play was implemented with play groups including 3 children (ages 6-8) with autism, resulting in decreased isolate play and collateral gains in social play, and decreased stereotyped object play and collateral gains in functional object play. Advances in play behaviors were generalized and were accompanied by…

Definitions of social skills and conceptualizations of social skill deficiencies are presented, along with an overview of social skills assessment, articles on the assessment of social skills with handicapped and nonhandicapped children, and a variety of social skills assessment instruments. Discussed are the following five methods of assessing…

Synthesizes literature on social comparison in young children. Findings center on (1) children's motivations to engage in social comparison; (2) peer targets; (3) age when social comparison appears; (4) developmental sequences; (5) effects upon subsequent behavior; and (6) sex-related differences. Suggests pratical implications for teaching.…

A two-year study of preschoolers attempted to identify emotions and prosocial behaviors that reliably predict teachers' ratings of young preschoolers' affective and behavioral social-emotional competence. Results showed that observed emotion, especially anger and sadness, often predicted teacher ratings of social-emotional competence in…

Examines whether there are sex differences during middle childhood in children's choices to participate in activities differing in level of adult-provided structure; effects of structure on children's compliance, leadership, and recognition seeking directed to adults and to peers; and relation of sex-typed social skills or dispositions and…

This article describes the use of social-story intervention programs to teach appropriate social behavior to 3 children with autism (ages 7 and 11). The intervention combined social-story methodology with a behavioral social skills training strategy. Suggestions for developing, implementing, and evaluating social-story programs are provided.…