EFFECTS OF HIGH-PROBABILITY REQUESTS ON THE SOCIAL INTERACTIONS OF YOUNG-CHILDREN WITH SEVERE DISABILITIES

High-probability requests were used to increase social interactions in 3 young boys with severe disabilities who had been identified as seve rely socially withdrawn. A multiple baseline design across participant s was used to evaluate the effects of high-probability request interve ntion on (a) social initiations, (b) social responses, (c) continued i nteractions, and (d) performance of high- and low-probability requests . The students were observed in a second setting to examine generaliza tion effects across peers who did not participate in the training sequ ence and settings. The results demonstrated that the high-probability requests increased the students' responsiveness to low-probability req uests to initiate social behavior. Increases were also found in (a) un prompted initiations and extended interactions to the training peers, (b) unprompted initiations and extended interactions to peers who were not involved in the training procedure, and (c) generalized unprompte d initiations and interactions in a second nontraining setting. The st udents maintained increased levels of initiations and interactions aft er all prompts were removed from both the training and nontraining set tings.