Using Peers as Trainers to Increase an Autistic Child's Social Interactions

Abstract

This report presents a data‐based intervention designed t o increase the social interactions between an autistic boy and his nondisabled peers. A “loose training” prompting tactic was used to teach the child to initiate to the peers. After several training sessions the autistic child increased his spontaneous interactions (a) with the training peers in non‐training, generalizationsessions and (b) with non‐training peersin the generalization sessions. The results show promise for the discovery and implementation of generalization tactics that promote the social integration of disabled and nondisabled children.