Promoting peer interaction through incidental teaching : some direct and general effects on children with disabilities

The purpose of this study was to examine the effects of incidental teaching, a naturalistic approach that has been used to teach language skills to children with disabilities, on the frequency of peer interaction in preschool-aged children with disabilities. Incidental teaching was defined as a child-initiated approach that takes place within the context of daily classroom activities where the teacher utilizes the child's interest in play materials as a natural reinforcer for engaging in prompted behavior. Two children enrolled in a mainstreamed classroom participated in the study, one of whom was diagnosed with Down's Syndrome, and the other of whom was diagnosed with Developmental Delay. A multiple-baseline without replication on the second child was used to examine the effects of incidental teaching on spontaneous social interaction. Results suggested that incidental teaching produced direct effects by promoting peer interaction through teacher prompting and generalized effects by promoting spontaneous interactions with peers during nontraining intervals. More importantly, the data indicated that the child who received intervention spontaneously interacted with peers at levels that were more often within the range of typical peer interaction compared to baseline levels, while social interaction remained at baseline levels for the child who did not receive intervention. Although no strong causal conclusion could be drawn from either the empirical or anecdotal data, the increases in social interaction during intervention indicated that a closer examination of incidental teaching as a tool for promoting social skills in children with disabilities is warranted.