Answers to two parents and a gifted fourth grader are given by two educators on questions of peer acceptance, a three-year-old who is reading, and communication skills. (CL)

The sociometric testing indicated that the LD children were less popular than their normal peers, but no less insightful about how others regarded them. No relationship between decentering ability and popularity was found. (Author)

It has been proposed that aggressive behavior may result from unrealistically positive self-evaluations that are disputed by others (Baumeister, Smart, & Boden, 1996). The present three studies tested this proposition concurrently and longitudinally for the domain of self-perceived social competence (SPSC) in 3-6th grade children on two…

The "Making Special Friends Project" of the Burlington, Vermont public school system resulted in a series of six manuals: (1) A Review of the Literature; (2) Model Overview; (3) Implementation Guidelines and Inservice Training Manual; (4) Strategies for Implementing Model Components; (5) Developing Community Resource and Accessibility…

The major goals of the Hawaii Integration Project have been to: (1) promote the development of social interactive skills in severely handicapped children to facilitate their acceptance by and adjustment to integrated community settings; (2) develop effective methods of training (including inservice) to prepare general education teaching staff,…

Grounding their efforts on results of previous research, investigators have sought to improve peer relationships of unpopular children through direct instruction in social skills. Generally, such interventions have been effective in promoting specific outcomes. For example, skill-training programs improve children's ability to form colleague…

The report documents the findings of a 3-year study of the social skill development of severely handicapped youth within integrated school and community settings. A series of seven studies were instituted on two central issues: (1) the ability to train and promote generalization of social language skills in the form of initiation and respondent…

A teacher recounts his work to help a troubled child (who was causing classroom disturbances) learn to make friends and gain peer acceptance. (CB)

The article reviews 25 studies investigating peer status of learning disabled children. An underlying assumption of most of the studies was a unidirectional relationship between peer status and social skills. The studies are reinterpreted using a bidirectional model in which peer status is the outcome of reciprocal interactions between child,…

Because research on social integration indicates that physical proximity to normal-hearing peers may result in neither social interaction nor social acceptance, teachers may need to help their hearing impaired students to specifically develop social communication skills. Teachers may also need to create opportunities for social interaction between…

Examines the effects of social skills training and peer involvement on the peer acceptance of disliked preadolescents. Identified as unaccepted by peers and deficient in conversational skills, 56 fifth- and sixth-grade children were randomly assigned to one of four treatment conditions involving conversational skills training and/or peer…

Because learning disabled (LD) children are often the targets of negative behavior and social rejection by peers, the article reviews the literature on the social interactions typical of LD children and on peer-mediated strategies for enhancing LD children's social standing and examines the critical role of the classroom teacher in altering the…

When coached in leading peers, asking questions of peers, making comments to peers, and supporting peers, trained children showed significant increase in their use of comments and leads and improved in questions and supports, whereas controls showed little change. Increases in skill use in the classroom with peers was correlated with improvements…

Eighty-five children with learning disabilities (LD) in grades 3-6 were compared to matched low achieving (LA) peers. Results indicated that the two groups were comparable on most social competence measures, although LD children reported themselves less lonely than LA children, and regular class children rated LD children more likable than LA…