Abstract
The purposes of the present study were to implement class-wide social skills training (CSST) for third-grade children and to examine effects on their social skills acquisition, peer acceptance, and subjective reports of school adjustment. Class A (n=37) was the intervention group, and Class B (n=35) , a comparison group that received no class-wide social skills training. Rather, Class B was taught in the usual way. The teacher of Class A had reported interpersonal difficulties among the students. Based on a behavioral assessment of the children's peer relationship problems at school, "emotion understanding", "requesting", and "declining" were selected as the target skills. Following class-wide social skills training, the intervention group showed improvement in the 3 target skills. Peer acceptance also improved in the intervention group. The children in the intervention group were more likely to report an increased level of school adjustment at the 3-month follow-up. The increase in social adjustment was largest in those who had showed the lowest adjustment scores before the intervention. On the other hand, the school adjustment of the children in the comparison group did not change significantly.
