Which of the following is a prerequisite for using the teaching Interaction Procedure?
Show I teach students with autism. I feel confident teaching academics and life skills, but not social skills. I need an easy and effective teaching method that is flexible, because I need to teach a variety of skills to a variety of children. Many of my students have intermediate or advanced language skills, but have trouble making friends and maintaining relationships. I can’t arrange to work 1:1 with every student, so it needs to be something I can do in a group. Any suggestions? Answered by Chante Stoeckley, MEd, BCBA, LBA This is a common question, because although the available research on teaching social skills is increasing, it can be hard for teachers to find evidence-based social skills curricula and strategies. One strategy that has been shown to be effective in group instruction across a variety of learners and different social skills is the Teaching Interaction Procedure. The Teaching Interaction Procedure is a 6-step process in which the teacher introduces the skill to be taught, gives a rationale for doing the skill, describes the steps involved in doing it correctly, models the skill, has the students practice the skill in role play, and provides feedback and reinforcement. This procedure has been studied numerous times in the past ten years, including using it 1:1 (e.g. Leaf et al., 2009), in groups (e.g. Leaf, Dotson, Oppeneheim, Sheldon, & Sherman, 2010), and in schools (Tullis & Gallagher, 2016). In this installment of Clinical Corner, I will show you how it is commonly implemented, a helpful variation, how it compares to other options, and where you can find more resources. Before teaching social skills, start by choosing the skills to teach and setting up appropriate motivational systems for the instruction. While identifying skills to teach is outside of the scope of this particular article, it is arguably more important than how you teach it! Teaching the right skills (ones that are at the student’s level based on assessment, are meaningful to the learner and their social community, and will open up new opportunities) is both crucial and difficult. Teaching these skills in a group format adds an additional measure of complexity. Please see chapters 1 and 5 of Teaching Social Skills to People with Autism: Best Practices in Individualizing Interventions (Bondy & Weiss, 2013) available here for guidance in choosing goals and assessing social skills. Once you have skills chosen, set up a token or point system to motivate your students to do their best during social skills practice. To do this you’ll need to identify one or more preferred activities or items that each student would like to earn and design points or tokens they can exchange for their chosen reward. Please see this ASAT Treatment Summary for references on how to do this effectively. Once these steps are done, you are ready to teach. Here are more details on how to implement the six steps of the Teaching Interaction Procedure with examples. The examples cover both 1:1 and group instruction, elementary and adolescent age groups, and intermediate and advanced social skills. Step 1- Introduce the Skill: Tell the student(s) what they will be learning. Give the skill a name that is descriptive and appropriate based on their skill set and language level. Then have each student tell you what the skill is (It’s important that students respond actively throughout the instruction, so each step should include opportunities to respond. Don’t let it become a lecture!)
Step 2 – Rationale and Cue: Provide a rationale explaining why the students would use this skill. It should describe a natural consequence of implementing the skill and be meaningful to the individual student. You can provide an example and have each student give you their own rationale. Then identify the setting or the cues that show it’s an appropriate time to use the skill. Have each student tell you when they would use the skill.
Step 3 – Break Down Steps: Before teaching, break down the skill into a series of steps (typically 2-5). The number of steps should capture the most important elements of the skill and be easy to memorize. Tell the students each step and have them say the steps in order.
Step 4 – Model: Model the skill you are teaching. In the Teaching Interaction Procedure, it is often (but not always) modeled both incorrectly and correctly, so that the students can learn to identify examples and non-examples of the skill. Try first modeling it incorrectly by doing some, but not all, of the steps. Have the students tell you whether you included all of the steps or missed any, and then tell you what you missed and how to fix it. Then model it again correctly. You can model with another adult, a confederate peer, one of the students, or sometimes (depending on the skill) by yourself.
Step 5 – Role Play: Give each student a chance to demonstrate the skill in a role play with you. Make sure to provide the cue that starts the skill you are teaching. After the students demonstrate the skill, give them descriptive feedback about what they did right and any errors they made. If they made errors, have them try it again. If they make errors the second time, you might need to provide prompts during the role play to make sure they get it right by the third try.
Step 6 – Feedback and Reinforcement: Throughout the Teaching Interaction Procedure, the student should receive reinforcement for correct responses (typically both descriptive praise along with some kind of reward) and corrective feedback for errors. Before starting the instruction, identify the student’s preferences and items that are likely to reward (reinforce) correct responses and participation. For many students learning social skills, a token or point system is a good way to do this. Throughout the lesson, they can earn points or tokens for correct answers to questions (during steps 1-4) and role playing the skill accurately (step 5). At the end, they can turn in their points/tokens for rewards such as small items or special privileges. One method for giving these tokens is to give two points for correct performance on the first try, one point for correct performance on the second try, and give just praise if they respond correctly on the third try or with prompting. This would occur at every step in the teaching interaction, not just at the end. Here is another example of the Teaching Interaction Procedure also used with a group. This time, the example is for a group of elementary students and the feedback/reinforcement procedure (dispersing points throughout the procedure) is included.
Repeat these procedures each session until each student has mastered the skill. You can adapt it in future lessons. For example, you may not need to label and explain the skill after the first session or two. You could have the students do that instead! In the research, students often needed 3-6 sessions to learn a skill, but it will vary based on your learners. How would you know if the skill has been mastered? Doing it correctly on the first try in the role play is one way, but a better way would be to do a test or a probe as follows: without telling the student what you are doing, set up a situation outside of the group where it would be appropriate for them to use the skill, and see if they do it. For example, in the first example of teaching changing conversation topics, at a random time during the day, start a conversation with the student, and then suddenly look bored. See if they change the topic. Or in the second example of teaching Suzie to say hi, wait until Suzie is playing alone, and suddenly walk in and sit by her, to see if she says “hi”. Students will progress through the procedure at different rates, and it’s important to make sure each student gets enough practice. However, if a student does not make progress or master a skill despite adequate practice opportunities, consider the following troubleshooting tips:
One potentially useful variation of the Teaching Interaction Procedure adds some steps to ensure generalization: that the student will actually use the skill taught, not just with the teacher or during role plays, but in real life situations where appropriate (Kassardjian & Taubman, 2013). You can see whether generalization is occurring by observing the student in other settings to see if the social skill is used or by asking parents whether it occurs outside of school. To use this variation, make the following minor modifications to Step 5 and add some additional opportunities to practice in real life settings (generalization phases): Step 5 – Role Play: When doing the role plays, use a wide variety of realistic potential scenarios, and bring in as many components of potential real-life situations as possible, particularly those in which the skill hasn’t been observed. Have the students role play with other students so that they have opportunities to interact with daily. Do the role plays with materials that are common in their daily life and in locations where the skill would actually be used. For example, in the previous example teaching students to invite someone to play a game, you might conduct the role plays with students in the locations they typically play (such as outside on the playground) using the actual games the students play at recess. Generalization Phase 1- Reminder, Praise, Reward: After students reach mastery on the role plays, set up or identify situations when they can use the new skill in real life. If the skill was related to game playing, for example, you could use recess or a classroom game time. At the beginning of the activity, remind the students to use their new skills. If they use it correctly at the right time, provide both praise and a reinforcer. Generalization Phase 2 Praise and Reward: During natural situations (same as Phase 1), do not remind students in advance of the skill, and if they do it correctly, provide praise and a reward afterward. Generalization Phase 3 – Praise: During natural situations (same as Phase 1), do not remind students in advance of the skill, and if they do it correctly, provide only praise afterward. Generalization Phase 4 – Independence: Continue to set up situations for the skill to occur but provide no reminders or consequences. Now the students should be doing it on their own in the natural environment! Congratulations! There are other options for teaching social skills besides the Teaching Interaction Procedure. While there are more than this, let’s compare it to two others: Social Stories and Behavioral Skills Training. Social Stories: Social Stories are stories that are individualized for the learner and provide information to a learner about a social topic. To be considered a social story, there are currently 10 characteristics that are available on the official website. Social Stories are a common intervention, and so researchers have compared them to the Teaching Interaction Procedure to see which is more effective. In the first comparison (Leaf et al., 2012), six students were taught six different skills each, three taught with the Teaching Interaction Procedure and three with Social Stories. The results were that the students mastered 18 out of the 18 skills that were taught using the Teaching Interaction Procedure and the students mastered only 4 out of the 18 skills taught with Social Stories. While this comparison was between 1:1 applications of both techniques, it was replicated with a group instruction using both strategies (Kassardjian et al., 2014). In this study, they found that the teaching interaction procedure was effective for all students, while Social Stories did not result in any improvement, and therefore they recommended the use of Teaching Interaction Procedure over social stories based on their research. Behavioral Skills Training: If you are familiar with Behavioral Skills Training (BST), you will have noticed the similarities. Behavioral Skills Training has four components: instructions, modeling, practice, and feedback. The defining difference between the two is that BST does not identify the rationale for using the skill. Another difference is that in the Teaching Interaction Procedure, it is common to model both the correct and incorrect performance, in order to develop discrimination (the ability to tell the difference between the two). A specific version of this step has been named the “Cool Not Cool” procedure and has been shown to be somewhat effective in and of itself (Au et al., 2016). In BST, only the correct version of the skill is modeled. When a review of the research on Behavioral Skills Training and the Teaching Interaction Procedure with individuals with Autism was conducted (Leaf et al., 2015), they found that both procedures had adequate evidence and were effective. If you want to use the Teaching Interaction Procedure to teach social skills, one thorough curriculum and teaching guide is the book Crafting connections: Contemporary applied behavior analysis for enriching the social lives of persons with autism spectrum disorder, by Taubman, Leaf, McEachin & Driscoll (2011) available through this link. The articles I’ve referred to throughout this piece (below) also provide examples of how the Teaching Interaction Procedure can be implemented. References Au, A., Mountjoy, T., Leaf, J. B., Leaf, R., Taubman, M., McEachin, J., & Tsuji, K. (2016). Teaching social behaviour to individuals diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder using the cool versus not cool procedure in a small group instructional format. Journal of Intellectual and Developmental Disability, 41(2), 115–124. doi:10.3109/13668250.2016.1149799 Bondy, A., & Weiss, M. J. (2013). Teaching social skills to people with autism: Best practices in individualizing interventions (1st ed.). Bethesda, MD: Woodbine House. Kassardjian, A., Leaf, J. B., Ravid, D., Leaf, J. A., Alcalay, A., Dale, S., … Oppenheim-Leaf, M. L. (2014). Comparing the teaching interaction procedure to social stories: A replication study. Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders, 44(9), 2329–2340. doi:10.1007/s10803-014-2103-0 Kassardjian, A., & Taubman, M. (2013). Utilizing teaching interactions to facilitate social skills in the natural environment. Education and Training in Autism and Developmental Disabilities, 48(2), 245–257. Leaf, J. B., Dotson, W. H., Oppeneheim, M. L., Sheldon, J. B., & Sherman, J. A. (2010). The effectiveness of a group teaching interaction procedure for teaching social skills to young children with a pervasive developmental disorder. Research in Autism Spectrum Disorders, 4(2), 186–198. doi:10.1016/j.rasd.2009.09.003 Leaf, J. B., Oppenheim-Leaf, M. L., Call, N. A., Sheldon, J. B., Sherman, J. A., Taubman, M., … Leaf, R. (2012). Comparing the teaching interaction procedure to social stories for people with autism. Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis, 45(2), 281–298. doi:10.1901/jaba.2012.45-281 Leaf, J. B., Taubman, M., Bloomfield, S., Palos-Rafuse, L., Leaf, R., McEachin, J., & Oppenheim, M. L. (2009). Increasing social skills and pro-social behavior for three children diagnosed with autism through the use of a teaching package. Research in Autism Spectrum Disorders, 3(1), 275–289. doi:10.1016/j.rasd.2008.07.003 Leaf, J. B., Townley-Cochran, D., Taubman, M., Cihon, J. H., Oppenheim-Leaf, M. L., Kassardjian, A., … Pentz, T. G. (2015). The Teaching Interaction Procedure and behavioral skills training for individuals diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder: a review and commentary. Review Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders, 2(4), 402–413. doi:10.1007/s40489-015-0060-y Taubman, M. T., Leaf, R. B., McEachin, J., & Driscoll, M. (2011). Crafting connections: Contemporary applied behavior analysis for enriching the social lives of persons with autism spectrum disorder. DRL Books. Tullis, C., & Gallagher, P. (2016). Effects of a group teaching interaction procedure on the social skills of students with autism spectrum disorders. Education and Training in Autism and Developmental Disabilities, 51(4), 421–433. Citation for this article: Stoeckley, C. (2020). Clinical corner: What is a good way to teach social skills in a group? Science in Autism Treatment, 17(2). Other Related ASAT Clinical Corners:
Related ASAT Articles:
Related ASAT Research Synopses:
Related Media Watch Letters:
What is a prerequisite for using the teaching interaction Procedure?The teaching interaction procedure consists of six components: (a) identifying and labeling the target behavior, (b) providing a meaningful rationale, (c) describing the target behavior, (d) demonstrating the target behavior, (e) role-playing, and (f) providing feedback (Leaf et al., 2015).
What is one potential benefit of the teaching interaction procedure?Which of the following is one potential benefit of the Teaching Interaction procedure? Facilitates independence.
Which of the following procedures have been found to be more effective than social stories?The results indicated that the teaching interaction procedure was more efficacious than the social story procedure across all three participants.
When should we teach self help skills?As children approach 2 years of age, however, the journey towards independence should start with teaching them how to do simple self care tasks, such as using the potty and taking off their hats. We encourage starting to work on independent and self-help skills as early as possible.
|