The+Impact+of+Social-Behavioral+Learning+Strategy+outline


 * This article was written by an associate professor of special education, and encompasses a study of four male children aged 9-10 (from middle income families, in rural USA) with asperger's syndrome.
 * Each of the children had nonverbal IQ scores within 10% of their non-impaired peers, but had far less developed social skills.
 * The research comprised of three phases.
 * The first phase was to establish a baseline for comparative reasons. The children received corrective feedback, but were not subject to intervention.
 * The second phase involved the researches intervening upon offending behavior in which the teacher and paraprofessionals used a method called SODA to reinforce positive social interaction.
 * Soda consists of four parts: Stop, Observe, Deliberate, and then Act.
 * During the intervention, the children were exposed to a story involving the steps of SODA, followed by questions meant to reinforce or introduce methods to behave properly according to social norms.
 * The third step involved maintenance and repetition of the second process.
 * Upon completion of the 5 month study, the four children all had marked gains in acting in an acceptable manner. They all benefited from this.
 * For example, one of the children, "bob" went from a rate under 10% during the baseline measurement to between 60 - 80% post intervention and during maintenance in respect to cooperative learning.
 * Each of the four children were performing within 50% of their non-impaired peers after the maintenance period, as opposed to performing properly only 10% of the time prior.