Peer Intervention

Description of the Strategy

Clinicians have increasingly recognized the potential of peers as effective agents of behavioral change in children. A considerable body of research conducted over the past three decades has convincingly demonstrated that the peer group exerts strong influences on the acquisition and refinement of a wide range of skills, most notably social skills and academic competencies. Given their important role as teachers across a wide range of skills and settings, peers are a natural choice for treatment agents and can be equally or more effective than adults. Peer intervention strategies focus on using children's interactions with age mates as a means of teaching new skills through modeling, providing opportunities for skill usage, and improving upon already established competencies. Targets have been wide-ranging. Teaching social skills, increasing rates of peer interaction, decreasing disruptive classroom behavior, and remediating academic deficiencies are some examples.

Peer intervention can be split into two broad categories: indirect and direct peer approaches. Indirect approaches capitalize on naturally occurring contingencies to increase appropriate social and academic behaviors. Particular strategies falling in this category include the use of group reinforcement and peer modeling. Group reinforcement involves using the responses of the peer group as naturally occurring reinforcement for socially appropriate behaviors. Peer attention is an often-used example. A child who is behaving in a socially competent way will receive attention and acceptance from the peer group. For example, a student who is sharing toys with the other children in the classroom will receive praise and attention from the peers around him or her. This positive attention, in turn, will increase the likelihood of using socially appropriate behavior in the future. In contrast, if a child is behaving in an unacceptable manner, the group might ignore the child and the behavior, resulting in behavioral change. For example, children who react with a tantrum when they do not get what they want might be ignored by the peer group. Peer modeling is another indirect strategy that entails using competent peers as exemplars of adept behavior. With a strong empirical basis in the work of Bandura, the rationale for using peers as prototypes is that after target children are exposed to models of skilled behavior, they are likely to acquire new competencies, altering their own behavior to match that which they have observed. Children are more likely to imitate a peer they perceive as receiving reinforcement and less likely to emulate behavior of a peer who has been punished for a behavioral transgression. In somewhat [Page 953]more direct variations, sometimes using prompts and reinforcement, peers have served as coping models in treatments addressing a whole range of presenting concerns from specific phobias to compliance with painful medical procedures. Overall, indirect peer intervention strategies use peers in a subtle way to increase or decrease particular behavior patterns.

The direct peer approach, in contrast, utilizes peers in a more immediate manner to enhance children's social competence and academic behaviors. Direct peer interventions include peer proximity techniques, direct peer prompting and reinforcement, and peer initiation strategies. The peer proximity approach is based on the premise that placing skilled peers with target children will allow for the natural transmission of skills from one child to another. Furthermore, these children are more likely to use newly acquired skills when surrounded by a peer group that facilitates and reinforces their use. Accordingly, children with behavioral problems are simply placed with more socially competent peers. The socially skilled companions are often instructed to play with the target child, engage the child in play, and teach the child how to play. Peer prompting and reinforcement involve, as the name implies, teaching peers to prompt and reinforce the responses of target children. A prompt is defined as a directive to engage in an activity (e.g., “Why don't you get on the swing and I'll push you”), and reinforcement comes subsequently during the interaction (e.g., “I like to play with you”). Peer initiation, however, is the most frequently used intervention for promoting social interaction among target children. Using this approach, socially competent peers are instructed to both initiate social interactions and to respond to initiations from children with behavioral problems. Social initiation may include asking a child to play, suggesting an idea for an activity, or providing assistance with something. Direct peer intervention techniques can be used with either a single peer or within the context of multiple peers.

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