A social skills training program was evaluated with emotionally disturbed adolescent inpatients. The targeted social skills required an action or reaction within six skill areas. The program was adapted from a commercially available social skills training game that features the use of response specific feedback, self-monitoring, individualized reinforcers, and individualized performance criteria. A peer conducted the baseline and posttraining sessions while the training was conducted by an adult who had no previous interactive history with the subjects. A multiple baseline design across groups demonstrated that the program increased appropriate responding in all skill areas and that these effects generalized during the posttraining peer conducted sessions. A generalization test indicated that the subjects used their newly learned skills with a novel adult outside the training setting. The program appears quite applicable to emotionally disturbed adolescents since it targets skills in a variety of areas and employs standardized procedures to enhance replicability.
Although there is a consensus that many emotionally disturbed adolescents are in need of social skills training (e.g., Elder, Edelstein, & Narick, 1979;Rhodes, Redd, & Bergren, 1979;Spence & Marzillier, 1979), there is less agreement regarding what skills need to be taught and whether the commonly used training procedures can be replicated.