Identification of social skill curriculum targets for severely handicapped children in mainstream preschools.

In order to identify potential social skills targets with severely handicapped preschool children, the social interactions of 80 children, 20 in each of the following groups were assessed; (a) nonhandicapped 3- to 5-year-olds who received high sociometric ratings from class peers, (b) severely handicapped 3- to 5-year-olds who received relatively higher sociometric ratings than their similarly handicapped class peers, (c) nonhandicapped 3- to 5-year-olds who received low sociometric ratings from class peers, and (d) severely handicapped 3- to 5-year-olds who received relatively lower sociometric ratings than their handicapped class peers. All children were recruited from 10 mainstream preschool programs. Continuous observations of specific social initiations and responses to those initiations (210 min total per child) indicated that: (a) nonhandicapped children seemed not to have been affected adversely by exposure to handicapped peers and, in fact, normal subjects regulated the complexity of their social initiations to match the developmental level of handicapped interactants; (b) negative social initiations emerged as a behavior pattern that powerfully influenced children's negative evaluations of others; (c) specific approach behaviors such as play organizers, shares, affection, and assistance were displayed more often by higher regard handicapped children; (d) responding to others' social initiations and having others respond to social bids were important requisites for social acceptability, and (e) the above-mentioned behavior patterns were not setting-specific.