Objective: Young children with pragmatic language delays often have difficulty interacting with peers, initiating and responding to conversations, and asking others to play. The purpose of this investigation was to examine the effect of the Skillstreaming social skills program on preschool children with pragmatic language delays. Method: Three male children, ages 3.0-3.3 years with pragmatic language delays, were recruited for this investigation. An A/B design was used to measure participants’ responses to peers across two weeks of Skillstreaming intervention. Participants were provided small group instruction while bing taught Skillstreaming’s “Asking to Play” thereafter given opportunities to generalize the skills with a matched peer from a neurotypical dyad group in a preschool classroom setting. Results: Upon the initiation of the Skillstreaming intervention, no changes in level were evident. However, after two to three intervention sessions, all three participants gradually showed increases in the defined behavior of responses to peers. This investigation found Skillstreaming to be a successful intervention as the total number of responses increased from baseline to treatment phases. Further, subjective checklists completed by parents of participants pre- and post-intervention showed increases in the mean number of social skills displayed in the home environment. Conclusion: With strategic and varying generalization, social skills training, using Skillstreaming continues to be a valuable resource for teaching social skills to preschool-aged children. Varying activities, increasing the number of peers, expanding locations for generalization, along with adult modeling and prompts would increase consistency of responses to peers and should be considered.
