Mary A. McEvoy

Relative Effects of Interventions Supporting the Social Competence of Young Children with Disabilities

This study compared the effects of different intervention approaches designed to promote peer-related social competence of young children with disabilities. Preschool-age children with disabilities who were enrolled in classes in Tennessee and Minnesota participated in four intervention conditions (environmental arrangements, child specific, peer mediated, and comprehensive) and a control (no intervention) condition. A performance-based assessment of social competence, which consisted of observational, teacher rating, and peer rating measures, was collected before and after the interventions and again the following school year. Analyses revealed that the peer-mediated condition had the greatest and most sustained effect on childrens participation in social interaction and on the quality of interaction, with the child-specific condition also having a strong effect. The environmental arrangements condition had the strongest effect on peer ratings. These findings indicate that there are effective intervention approaches available for children who have needs related to social competence and that different types of interventions may be useful for addressing different goals (e.g., social skills or social acceptance) of individual children.

Functional Behavioral Assessment in Early Education Settings.

Functional behavioral assessment (FBA) is the process of identifying the events in the environment that consistently precede and follow challenging behavior. The use of FBA has increased significantly following the reauthorization of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act in 1997, which mandated FBAs be conducted when children with disabilities demonstrate challenging behavior. The purposes of this paper are to review the research supporting FBA, describe the components of FBA, and discuss implications for early childhood special education.

Effects of Cumulative Prenatal Substance Exposure and Environmental Risks on Children's Developmental Trajectories

Examined the effects of cumulative prenatal substance exposure and cumulative environmental risk on the developmental trajectories of 278 infants, toddlers, and preschool children. Results indicated that both cumulative risk indexes were significantly correlated. Results also indicated that both indexes were related to decrements in developmental trajectories (intercept and slope) from 3 to 57 months of age. Both prenatal exposure and environmental risk added unique variance to the prediction of developmental level and rate of growth when entered after covariates (i.e., birth weight and sex). However, across a number of models with and without covariates, environmental risk accounted for more variance in developmental trajectories than did prenatal exposure. Implications are discussed.

General Growth Outcomes for Young Children: Developing a Foundation for Continuous Progress Measurement

Public expectations of accountability in our education system have increasingly focused on young childrens development, in part because of Goal 1 of the National Education Goals (By the year 2000, all children in America will start school ready to learn). Few sensitive measurement systems have been developed, however, to monitor young childrens growth over time. Building such a system requires a parsimonious but comprehensive set of developmental outcomes expected of children between birth and age 8. In the two studies presented here, investigators formulated a set of 15 general growth outcomes for young children, and conducted a survey of parents of children with and without disabilities and professionals in early childhood and early elementary education to validate the outcomes.

Assessing and enhancing generalization and social validity of social-skills interventions with children and adolescents

Generalization and social validity are necessary aspects of any applied behavior analytic endeavor. They are especially critical to social-sldlls training research and practice. Investigators have demonstrated the effectiveness of various leaming theory-based interventions in teaching social skills to and increasing peer interactions of children with and without disabilities. However, development of a technology for reliably transferring these changes across different situations or ensuring their persistence over time has proven to be more problematic. From both a conceptual and empirical standpoint, this article reviews progress in and barriers to assessing and enhancing generality of social behavior change and its relationship to social validity. If progress is to be made, then it will be necessary to (a) distinguish between generalization and generality in developing and evaluating social-skills interventions; (b) expand the concept of social validity to give more emphasis to objective measurement of social skills, interventions, and outcomes; and (c) pursue a systematic analysis of generality-and durability-programming tactics.

Behavioral Outcomes of Young Children Prenatally Exposed to Illicit Drugs: Review and Analysis of Experimental Literature

The purpose of this article was to review the findings from existing peer-reviewed experimental studies describing the behavioral and developmental outcomes associated with prenatal exposure to illicit drugs. Forty-six such studies and 460 individual outcomes occurring from birth to 60 months were identified. Only half of these outcomes (49.8%) were statistically significant, indicating adverse effects of prenatal exposure. The greatest number of outcomes were identified for infants younger than 1 month of age and within the neurodevelopmental domain. The contrast between these outcomes derived from experimental studies and those reported in the popular press is discussed.

Organizing Preschool Environments: Suggestions for Enhancing the Development/Learning of Preschool Children with Handicaps

Appropriate skill development is one of the basic functions of preschool programs. In many instances, behavior problems in classrooms can be managed by appropriately organizing caregiving environments. For example, researchers have demonstrated that organized environments may promote increases in appropriate social interaction and decreases in disruptive behavior. The purpose of this article is to suggest ways that preschool environments can be organized to avoid behavior problems, and the implications of these arrangements for moving children from preschool to elementary school settings are discussed. In addition, the relationship between environmental arrangement and direct contingency management interventions is discussed.

Districtwide Technical Assistance Teams: Designing Intervention Strategies for Young Children with Challenging Behaviors.

Over the past few years, we have seen a rapid expansion of services for young children with disabilities. In addition, there has been an increase in the programatic options and models for serving children with disabilities in settings with their typically developing peers. lt is clear that researchers are exerting unprecedented effort to evaluate and refine these program features and models to ensure maximally effective services in the least restrictive nvironment. At the same time, however, local early childhood programs are wrestling with the problems associated with integration. While they may clearly agree with the spirfiof inclusion, oftentimes they lack the expertise to work effectively with all children in inclusive settings. One group of children that appear to be at particular risk for failure in inclusive settings are children with emotional/behavioral difficulties. In fact, teachers and related service personnel are often faced with an overwhelming array of behavior problems that must be addressed in order to create effective and long-term inclusive educational opportunities. In short, local school districts need realistic, well-designed, and proven procedures for intervening with young children with emotional/behavioral disorders in inclusive education classrooms, and just as important, ways to teach teachers and others to implement hese procedures. Typically, school districts have relied on outside consultants to work with teachers to design effective interventions for children with emotional/behavioral disorders. These consultations usually include a combination of inservice training and direct consultation about a childs specific behavioralproblem. Wolfe (1991)and Reichle (1990) have identil ied a number of problems inherent in this model. Generally, consultants become involved once a behavior problem is at a crisis level. This often creates a situation in which reactive interventions are implemented. Although immediate effects may be seen, these interuentions often do not include procedures for teaching positive replacement behaviors or provisions for fading more intrusive interventions over time. Second, in many situations, consultation and inseruice training do not include ongoing feedback or evaluation. The lack of follow-up does not address intervention implementation issues or possible need for intervention change. Finally, there is no provision for systemwide training when consultants are hired on a caseby-case basis. Based on these and other problems associated with short-term inservice training, there appears to be a growing consensus that longitudinal on-site technical assistance is a critical and important aspect of effective consultation (Bailey, 1989; Fredericks & Templeman, 1990). In fact, Campbell (1990) has suggested that quality consultation results in (a) delineation of specific training needs, (b) incentives for personnel to participate, (c) clear identification of expected outcomes, and (d) supervised application of information with ongoing feedback. One longitudinal consultation model that addresses the problems identified above and includes these components of effective inservice training is the technical assistance team model (Reichle, 1990). The purpose of this article is to provide a brief overview of the critical components of a longitudinal technical assistance model as they have been used lo address the challenging

Descriptive and Experimental Analysis of Child-Caregiver Interactions That Promote Development of Young Children Exposed Prenatally to Drugs and Alcohol

This paper presents two studies of factors affecting developmental outcomes of young children exposed prenatally to drugs and alcohol. In Study One, descriptive analyses of 38 children and families indicated that, as a group, children scored lower on assessed cognitive and language development, that two rates of oral language and negative behavior by children were associated with these developmental areas, and that several child-caregiver interactions were associated with these differential rates of child behaviors. In Study Two, intervention targets were selected from Study One and manipulated in multiple-baseline fashion across two pairs of children. Results demonstrated increased rates of all identified ecobehavioral variables for three of four parents or other adult caregivers, with concomitant increases in rates of child language production during play activities.