Facilitation of interpeer affection in young children: the use of a story reading and stimulus fading procedure
| dc.contributor.author | Altman, Irwin Morris | |
| dc.contributor.supervisor | Acker, Loren E. | |
| dc.date.accessioned | 2025-07-03T21:52:22Z | |
| dc.date.available | 2025-07-03T21:52:22Z | |
| dc.date.issued | 1986 | |
| dc.degree.department | Department of Psychology | |
| dc.description.abstract | Interpeer physical affectionate and verbal appreciative responses were directly manipulated in day care children. A Pretreatment Baseline was carried out to measure any '' natural" or pre- existing occurrences of those physical and verbal responses. Next, the treatment--a story reading procedure that included modelling, role playing, stimulus fading, and praise- -was employed and it was successful in facilitating interpeer physical affection and verbal appreciation in the treatment setting. However, when posttreatment measures were compared to those in the Pretreatment Baseline, only the verbal appreciation response showed an increase in frequency. This reluctance of the children to perform interpeer physical affectionate responses was further underscored when a toy dog was made the object of the affection in the Posttreatment Baseline context. Although the children had not received any previous training with the dog, they showed an increase in dog-directed physical affection and verbal appreciation. In an effort to maximize the probability of occurrence of interpeer physical affectionate responses in play settings, two additional methods were designed (i.e., Instructional Control Procedure and Dog/Assimilation Procedure). After these methods were employed, the frequency of interpeer physical affection was finally increased from pretreatment levels. Although it is encouraging that interpeer physical affection can be facilitated, the effort required to achieve this goal was great. The latter is especially true in light of the aggression research which demonstrates that physical aggression is easily facilitated. Observational research of children in natural settings and the reactions of the parents, caregivers, and peers to the children's performance of inter peer affectionate responses is needed. This research could elucidate the dynamics which underlie the possible differences in the children's willingness to engage in aggressive as opposed to affectionate behaviours. Finally, future research must ascertain the sources for the children's reluctance to engage in interpeer physical affectionate behaviours if social learning strategies for the development of affectionate and gentle behaviour s in our children are to be realized. | |
| dc.description.scholarlevel | Graduate | |
| dc.identifier.uri | https://hdl.handle.net/1828/22457 | |
| dc.language.iso | en | |
| dc.rights | Available to the World Wide Web | |
| dc.title | Facilitation of interpeer affection in young children: the use of a story reading and stimulus fading procedure | |
| dc.type | Thesis |