Effects of Adult and Peer Social Initiations on the Social Behavior of Withdrawn, Maltreated Preschool Children

The present study compared peer and adult social-initiation interventions that were designed to increase the positive social behavior of withdrawn, maltreated preschool children. Thirty-six maltreated subjects were randomly assigned to peer treatment, adult treatment, or control conditions. In the peer treatment condition, peer confederates were trained to make play overtures to play-group dyads. Adult and peer confederates were matched in the number of positive initiations made during treatment. Conditions for the control group were identical to those for the other groups except the control-group peers or adults were not trained to make initiations. The results indicated significant pre-post differences favoring the peer treatment group in both treatment and generalization settings. School adjustment data supported these findings. Additionally, there were no significant differences between the adult treatment group and the control group on any measures.