Promoting Social Development

Abstract

Most of the early behavior modification programs with children were focused on increasing appropriate classroom behaviors and academic performance (Drabman & Furman, in press). In the last decade, though, increasing attention has been given to the social behavior of children. Adequate social skills have been recognized to be both important prerequisites to intellectual development and critical aspects of adjustment in themselves. While behavioral procedures such as modeling or reinforcement have been shown to hold considerable promise (Combs & Slaby, 1977), clinical investigators have seldom viewed their findings in a developmental framework, or explicitly considered developmental factors in designing treatment programs.