Teaching Play Skills to Visually Impaired Preschool Children: Its Effect on Social Interaction

OpenAlex İngilizce

The aim of this study is to assess the effects that teaching visually impaired (VI) preschool children play skills has on their abilities to initialize and respond to social interactions with their typically developing (TD) peers in a reverse mainstreaming preschool class. The subjects of the study were three female VI students regularly attending a preschool classroom. Based on their teacher’s comments, all children were limited in their ability to initiate and maintain social initiations and in their ability to respond to social interaction initialized by their peers. Play skills were taught to the target students using direct teaching methods through small group arrangements outside the class. The study was conducted using a multiple probe design using probe sessions across subjects in order to determine the impact of play skills taught through direct instruction on the social interactions of children in the class. Visual and non-parametric analyses showed that the play skills taught are effective in increasing the target VI students’ abilities to initiate interactions with their peers and in increasing their response behaviors. In addition, the target students not only generalized the interaction behaviors that they had learned to a girl of their own age, but they also retained what they had learned 2 and 3 weeks after the completion of the implementations.