The purpose of this study was to evaluate social skills training (SST) program in terms of its generalization, maintenance, and social validity. Four chronic schizophrenic inpatients who had stayed in a hospital more than 9 years participated in the SST program. The SST program consists of two phases; In order to promote its generalization and maintenance, (a) common physical and discriminative stimuli between the training setting and the natural setting were used, (b) the reinforcement schedule was shifted from continued reinforcement schedule (CRF) in training phase I to a partial reinforcement schedule in training phase II. Results indicate that the SST program improved social skills of participants, and that generalization and maintenance were observed for 20 months. The results of social validity questionnaires showed a positive evaluation of the SST program by both the participants and the doctor.

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In order to facilitate positive peer relations, classroom-based social skills training (three 45-minute sessions) was conducted with 2nd grade school children. The target social skills were positive social initiations and responses, which seemed to be basic to every kind of social skill for these children. The coaching procedure comprised instruction, modeling, behavioral rehearsal, feedback, and reinforcement. After the training, trained children, compared with control children, significantly increased a number of likability nominations from peers, which indicated that the children's peer relation improved after the training. The training gains for trained children were also supported by their teachers' ratings on the children's social skills. These results demonstrated that classroom-based social skills training facilitate the children's positive view to peers, as well as the acquisition of social skills.

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We trained a child with autistic behavior in Free operant settings. Then, we taught him to perform some tasks in controlled settings. In picture-card-naming task, he refused to do the task whenever he could not name the picture-card. Then we tried to teach him the question "What's this?", according to Koegel (1995) 's suggestion. Though some details of our procedures were different from Koegel's, as the child began to learn the question, he became more cooperative, and his voluntary naming behaviors increased. After this, his asking behavior generalized to Free operant settings and his daily life. Considering Koegel's results and ours, we recognize that the most important points are that social and natural reinforcers are effective, and that knowing the name as an answer to "What's this?" has a reinforcing effect.

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Recent recommendations made by the Japanese Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science, and Technology (MEXT) urge the infusion of new communication activities into the classroom, such as debate, public speaking, and oral reports. However, upon the introduction of oral communication into a system that has relied primarily on written communication and evaluation, problems associated with fear of communication will occur. As problems associated with communication fear have been sheltered by the lack of oral communication in the classroom, Japanese educators and researchers have limited resources to consult for information on how to help students cope with communication fear. This review fills in the gap by offering an explanation of some of the cognitive and emotive treatments available for alleviating communication fear, referred to as Communication Apprehension, Inhibition and Avoidance (CAIA). CAIA is an umbrella term that refers to a unified set of concepts such as interaction inhibition, behavioral disruption, and communicative avoidance, which are linked to counterproductive thinking, conditioned response, and/or incompetence. Treatments for oral communication difficulties in the classroom that are explained in this manuscript are: (1) cognitive restructuring, (2) visualization, (3) message focused imagery, and (4) systematic desensitization. The techniques described are tentative interventions that might be used to help their students with CAIA in Japan. Further research is necessary to test both the effectiveness and cultural appropriateness of each intervention.

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