The training and validation of youth-preferred social behaviors of child-care personnel.

This research sought to identify, train, and validate social behaviors preferred by youths to be used by youth-care personnel (called teaching-parents). With training, consistent increases in seven preferred behaviors were observed for the six teaching-parent trainees. These behaviors included offering to help, "getting to the point", giving reasons why a behavior is important to a youth, providing descriptions of alternative behaviors, positive feedback, smiling, and positive motivational incentives (i.e., points for task mastery exchanged for tangible reinforcers). Increases in these behaviors correlated with increases in the youths' ratings of the quality of the trainees' interactions. Posttraining levels of preferred social behavior and youth ratings for trainees also compared favorably with levels for successful professional teaching-parents. These results suggest that teaching-parents can be successfully trained to interact with youths in ways that are preferred by the youths.