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The effect of social skills training procedures on the acquisition of appropriate interpersonal skills for mentally retarded adults

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Abstract

A pretest/posttest control group design was utilized to examine the effect of social skills training on social interactions with peers, conversational interactions with a novel partner, and ratings of overall social functioning. The results failed to support the hypothesis that social skills training could increase the generalization of overall conversational responding of mentally retarded adults. The results showed that social skills training augmented with self-monitored videotape feedback could not optimize the effects of social skills training alone. The subjects did demonstrate acquisition of the targeted behaviors during training by meeting preestablished criteria for all of the training sessions. However, the subjects failed to generalize those behaviors across settings to in vivosocial situations.

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Garris, R.P., Hazinski, L. The effect of social skills training procedures on the acquisition of appropriate interpersonal skills for mentally retarded adults. J Psychopathol Behav Assess 10, 225–240 (1988). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00962547

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