SOCIAL SKILLS TRAINING - SHOULD WE RAZE, REMODEL, OR REBUILD

The degree to which children and youth establish and maintain satisfac tory interpersonal relationships with peers and teachers is the defini ng feature of social competence. Difficulties in social competence pla y a substantial role in social, psychological, and educational adjustm ent and often serve as the basis for intervention and remediation stra tegies. This article reviews past and present conceptualizations and s ummarizes narrative and meta-analytic reviews of social skills trainin g (SST) outcome studies. Overall, modest effect sizes are reported in the meta-analytic literature (M = .35) suggesting that SST is a relati vely weak intervention strategy, leading to only a 74% improvement in social functioning over chance (64% versus 50%). Three recommendations are offered as a blueprint for rebuilding SST: (7) improving assessme nt by considering the social validity and sensitivity of outcome measu res; (2) matching social skills intervention strategies to specific so cial skills deficits; and (3) programming for functional rather than t opographical generalization by adopting a contextual approach to teach ing social behavior within a competing behaviors framework.