While social skills training allows students to acquire social skills, often it does not enhance their performance of those skills outside the social skills training context. A withdrawal design was ...used to determine if a modified Tootling intervention could enhance at-risk, first-grade students' performance of two recently trained social skills (complimenting and encouraging) as they played. Following social skills training, baseline data was collected as students played a modified Jenga game in small groups. During the intervention phase, a Tootling intervention was added and the class earned a group reward contingent upon their reports of peers engaging in these recently trained social skills. After Tootling was withdrawn, it was reinstated. Analysis of class-wide data shows immediate and large (effect size estimates) increases in compliments and encouragements each time Tootling was applied, and an immediate decrease when Tootling was withdrawn. These findings suggest that the modified Tootling intervention enhanced performance of these social skills while students played. Discussion focuses on future research designed to determine if Tootling can cause meaningful increases in social skill development by increasing students' performance of social skills across social contexts.
Impact Statement
Social skills training allows students to acquire social skills, but typically does not result in students performing these behaviors in other social contexts. A peer-mediated intervention known as Tootling, which involves students being reinforced for reporting classmates' performance of recently trained social skills (i.e., providing encouragements and compliments), caused large and immediate increases in first-grade students' performance of these prosocial behaviors as they engaged in a small-group game.
In this article, we provide a wide-ranging review of recent research on leader individual differences. The review focuses specifically on the explosion of such research in the last decade. The first ...purpose of this review is to summarize and integrate various conceptual frameworks describing how leader attributes influence leader emergence and leader effectiveness. The second purpose is to provide a comprehensive review of empirical research on this relationship. Also, most prior reviews primarily examined leader personality traits; this review includes a broader array of leader attributes, including cognitive capacities, personality, motives and values, social skills, and knowledge and expertise. The final broad purpose of this paper is to review and integrate situational and contextual parameters into our conceptual framing of leader individual differences. Few, if any, prior reviews have systematically accounted for the critical role of such parameters in cuing, activating, or delimiting the effects of particular leader attributes. We do so in this article.
Abstract
Objective
Evidence suggests that social skills training (SST) is an efficacious intervention for negative symptoms in psychosis, whereas evidence of efficacy in other psychosis symptom ...domains is limited. The current article reports a comprehensive meta-analytic review of the evidence for SST across relevant outcome measures, control comparisons, and follow-up assessments. The secondary aim of this study was to identify and investigate the efficacy of SST subtypes.
Methods
A systematic literature search identified 27 randomized controlled trials including N = 1437 participants. Trials assessing SST against active controls, treatment-as-usual (TAU), and waiting list control were included. Risk of bias was assessed using the Cochrane risk of bias assessment tool. A series of 70 meta-analytic comparisons provided effect sizes in Hedges’ g. Heterogeneity and publication bias were assessed.
Results
SST demonstrated superiority over TAU (g = 0.3), active controls (g = 0.2–0.3), and comparators pooled (g = 0.2–0.3) for negative symptoms, and over TAU (g = 0.4) and comparators pooled (g = 0.3) for general psychopathology. Superiority was indicated in a proportion of comparisons for all symptoms pooled and social outcome measures. SST subtype comparisons were underpowered, although social-cognitive approaches demonstrated superiority vs comparators pooled. SST treatment effects were maintained at proportion of follow-up comparisons.
Conclusions
SST demonstrates a magnitude of effect for negative symptoms similar to those commonly reported for cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT) for positive symptoms, although unlike CBT, SST is not routinely recommended in treatment guidelines for psychological intervention. SST may have potential for wider implementation. Further stringent effectiveness research alongside wider pilot implementation of SST in community mental health teams is warranted.
Social skills are a factor that determines an individual's quality of social interactions with their surrounding. A high development level of social skills contributes to self-respect and ...self-esteem, which has a positive impact on human relations and, consequently, on the possibility of self-affirmation in different areas of life. The results of research that had to examine verbal and non-verbal social skills of primary school students are presented in this research paper. The research sample number was 506 students from six primary schools located in the city of Tuzla. Taking the sex of students as a variable into consideration, there were 225 girls and 281 boys, aged 11- 14. Regarding the research instruments, the Inventory of social skills (Roggio and Throckmorton 1986) was applied, and it comprised two areas: emotional-nonverbal, which reflects non-verbal social skills, and socio-verbal, the sub-scales of which measure verbal social skills. During the data processing, descriptive statistics were utilized, and the obtained indicators lead to a conclusion that primary school students show average results on both verbal and non-verbal domains of the Inventory of social skills. In the context of non-verbal social skills, students had the highest results on the Scale of sensitivity to emotions whereas, in the area of verbal social skills, the students had the highest results on the Scale of social sensitivity. These results enable insight into current conditions regarding the social skills of primary school students and since they are based on students' self-evaluation, they can serve as a basis for further research which should encompass the teachers' and parents' assessment.
Evidence-based social and emotional learning (SEL) programs, when implemented effectively, lead to measurable and potentially long-lasting improvements in many areas of children's lives. In the short ...term, SEL programs can enhance children's confidence in themselves; increase their engagement in school, along with their test scores and grades; and reduce conduct problems while promoting desirable behaviors. In the long term, children with greater socialemotional competence are more likely to be ready for college, succeed in their careers, have positive relationships and better mental health, and become engaged citizens. Those benefits make SEL programs an ideal foundation for a public health approach to education—that is, an approach that seeks to improve the general population's wellbeing. In this article, Mark Greenberg, Celene Domitrovich, Roger Weissberg, and Joseph Durlak argue that SEL can support a public health approach to education for three reasons. First, schools are ideal sites for interventions with children. Second, school-based SEL programs can improve students' competence, enhance their academic achievement, and make them less likely to experience future behavioral and emotional problems. Third, evidence-based SEL interventions in all schools—that is, universal interventions—could substantially affect public health. The authors begin by defining social and emotional learning and summarizing research that shows why SEL is important for positive outcomes, both while students are in school and as they grow into adults. Then they describe what a public health approach to education would involve. In doing so, they present the prevention paradox—"a large number of people exposed to a small risk may generate many more cases of an undesirable outcome than a small number exposed to a high risk"—to explain why universal approaches that target an entire population are essential. Finally, they outline an effective, school-based public health approach to SEL that would maximize positive outcomes for our nation's children.
Objective: Identifying treatments to improve functioning and reduce negative symptoms in consumers with schizophrenia is of high public health significance. Method: In this randomized clinical trial, ...participants with schizophrenia or schizoaffective disorder (N = 149) were randomly assigned to cognitive behavioral social skills training (CBSST) or an active goal-focused supportive contact (GFSC) control condition. CBSST combined cognitive behavior therapy with social skills training and problem-solving training to improve functioning and negative symptoms. GFSC was weekly supportive group therapy focused on setting and achieving functioning goals. Blind raters assessed functioning (primary outcome: Independent Living Skills Survey ILSS), CBSST skill knowledge, positive and negative symptoms, depression, and defeatist performance attitudes. Results: In mixed-effects regression models in intent-to-treat analyses, CBSST skill knowledge, functioning, amotivation/asociality negative symptoms, and defeatist performance attitudes improved significantly more in CBSST relative to GFSC. In both treatment groups, comparable improvements were also found for positive symptoms and a performance-based measure of social competence. Conclusions: The results suggest CBSST is an effective treatment to improve functioning and experiential negative symptoms in consumers with schizophrenia, and both CBSST and supportive group therapy actively focused on setting and achieving functioning goals can improve social competence and reduce positive symptoms.
Patients with Prader-Willi syndrome (PWS) display poor feeding and social skills as infants and fewer hypothalamic oxytocin (OXT)-producing neurons were documented in adults. Animal data demonstrated ...that early treatment with OXT restores sucking after birth. Our aim is to reproduce these data in infants with PWS.
We conducted a phase 2 escalating dose study of a short course (7 days) of intranasal OXT administration. We enrolled 18 infants with PWS under 6 months old (6 infants in each step) who received 4 IU of OXT either every other day, daily, or twice daily. We investigated the tolerance and the effects on feeding and social skills and changes in circulating ghrelin and brain connectivity by functional MRI.
No adverse events were reported. No dose effect was observed. Sucking assessed by the Neonatal Oral-Motor Scale was abnormal in all infants at baseline and normalized in 88% after treatment. The scores of Neonatal Oral-Motor Scale and videofluoroscopy of swallowing significantly decreased from 16 to 9 (P < .001) and from 18 to 12.5 (P < .001), respectively. Significant improvements in Clinical Global Impression scale scores, social withdrawal behavior, and mother-infant interactions were observed. We documented a significant increase in acylated ghrelin and connectivity of the right superior orbitofrontal network that correlated with changes in sucking and behavior.
OXT is well tolerated in infants with PWS and improves feeding and social skills. These results open perspectives for early treatment in neurodevelopment diseases with feeding problems.
This meta-analysis examined the effects of early interventions on social communication outcomes for young children with autism spectrum disorder. A systematic review of the literature included 1442 ...children (mean age 3.55 years) across 29 studies. The overall effect size of intervention on social communication outcomes was significant (
g
= 0.36). The age of the participants was related to the treatment effect size on social communication outcomes, with maximum benefits occurring at age 3.81 years. Results did not differ significantly depending on the person implementing the intervention. However, significantly larger effect sizes were observed in studies with context-bound outcome measures. The findings of this meta-analysis highlight the need for further research examining specific components of interventions associated with greater and more generalized gains.
Today's children will need a balanced set of cognitive, social and emotional skills in order to succeed in modern life. Their capacity to achieve goals, work effectively with others and manage ...emotions will be essential to meet the challenges of the 21st century. While everyone acknowledges the importance of socio-emotional skills such as perseverance, sociability and self-esteem, there is often insufficient awareness of 'what works' to enhance these skills. Teachers and parents don't really know whether their efforts at developing these skills are paying off, and what they could do better. Policies and programmes designed to measure and enhance socio-emotional skills vary considerably within and across countries. This report presents a synthesis of the OECD's analytical work on the role of socio-emotional skills and proposes strategies to raise them. It analyses the effects of skills on a variety of measures of individual well-being and social progress, which covers aspects of our lives that are as diverse as education, labour market outcomes, health, family life, civic engagement and life satisfaction. The report discusses how policy makers, schools and families facilitate the development of socio-emotional skills through intervention programmes, teaching and parenting practices. Not only does it identify promising avenues to foster socio-emotional skills, it also shows that these skills can be measured meaningfully within cultural and linguistic boundaries. (Author's abstract, IAB-Doku) ".
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