Young children with severe and profound mental disabilities are entering the public school system as the result of Public Law 99-457. Potential social/communicative partners increase as children with severe or profound disabilities share common school times and settings with children having no disabilities. / This intervention attempted to affect change in social/communicative skills among children with severe or profound mental disabilities by affecting change in the nondisabled peers' use of techniques that facilitated social/communicative interactions during free play. A multiple baseline design across groups was used to assess the relationship between the intervention and the participants' behaviors. The dependent measures included: (a) peers' (with no disabilities) use of imitating, waiting, being animated, modeling, sharing, requesting shares, and play organizing when interacting with peers with severe or profound mental disabilities and (b) visual regard, toy or body use, proximity, initiations and responses for peers with severe or profound mental disabilities. / Peer interactions were observed and data collected by an observer using an interval recording system with auditory signals cueing times to observe and times to record. The observations were made during experimental free play times in the experimental playroom setting. / The results indicated that a functional relationship existed between the training and the minimal changes observed in the peers' (with no disabilities) use of social/facilitative strategies when interacting with peers having severe or profound mental disabilities. Training phases involving prompts resulted in greatest use of social/facilitative behaviors by the peers with no disabilities and social/communicative behaviors of the peers with severe or profound mental disabilities during free play. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 56-01, Section: A, page: 0081. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--The Florida State University, 1994.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:fsu.edu/oai:fsu.digital.flvc.org:fsu_77327 |
| Contributors | Carr, Deborah Chrys., Florida State University |
| Source Sets | Florida State University |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Text |
| Format | 204 p. |
| Rights | On campus use only. |
| Relation | Dissertation Abstracts International |
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