Piloting a Peer-Mediated Intervention for Socially Isolated Preschoolers

• In Event: Using Sensing Technologies to Understand Children's Experiences in Early Childhood Education Classrooms

Abstract

During preschool, some children have difficulties interacting with peers (Bagwell & Schmidt, 2011). Peer-mediated interventions have shown positive results for children with disabilities and elementary-age children, but little work has considered potential benefits for isolated preschoolers without diagnosed disabilities (Zagona & Mastergeorge, 2018).

Traditionally, the study of children’s peer interactions has relied on surveys or in-person observations (e.g., Chen et al., 2020), but these approaches are time-consuming and often inaccurately represent children’s varied experiences. Sensing technologies are a newly emerging approach that can automatically code speech and location data to understand who children are talking to and the amount of speech exchanged (e.g., Gonzalez Villasanti, 2020). The present pilot study was designed to assess the promise and feasibility of a peer-mediated intervention for socially isolated preschoolers and test a new sensing technology system created to understand children’s peer interaction patterns.

The intervention occurred over six weeks in one preschool classroom. The teacher identified one socially isolated target student (TS) and two peers who were well-connected to their classmates to act as the TS’s buddies. Across six sessions, the teacher read a storybook to the buddies that targeted three strategies for interacting with the TS (e.g., invite the TS to play). During free play, the teacher reminded buddies to use these strategies while interacting with the TS.

Eleven in-person observations focused on the TS’s incoming and outgoing peer interactions were conducted. Furthermore, nine technology observations were conducted using IDEAs, a sensing system that uses recorders and Bluetooth technology to understand the TS’s interactions with specific peers. Variables collected by IDEAS included incoming talk from peers, outgoing talk to peers, and proximity to peers.

The in-person observations indicated that the intervention shows promise for increasing the TS’s peer interactions. Figure 1 shows evidence of an increase in outgoing and incoming peer interactions after the intervention was implemented. In contrast, observations from the sensing system were more variable. Figure 2 shows there was no consistent increase in the total number of words incoming from or outgoing to the TS’s peers. However, the number of words exchanged during the intervention’s implementation peaked during the seventh observation, which corresponded to a peak in time spent in proximity to peers. In other words, spending more time in proximity to peers corresponded to more peer talk.

Overall, our results do suggest that that there is potential for our intervention to improve the social experiences of isolated preschoolers. One potential explanation for our differing results is that the in-person observations took place during free play when buddies were instructed to use intervention strategies. The sensing technology observations captured longer portions of the day, potentially including activities less conducive to peer interaction. Future research would benefit from capturing contextual variables to help explain day-to-day changes in peer interactions.

A future goal for our sensing system is to provide teachers with real-time feedback about the peer interactions in their classrooms. Such information could guide teachers on how to adjust interventions to better fit a child’s needs, potentially increasing intervention effectiveness.

Authors

• Tiffany Jamie Foster, Ohio State University
  Presenting Author

• Nan XIAO, Ohio State University

• G. Logan Pelfrey, The Ohio State University

• Hugo Gonzalez Villasanti

• Matthew Brock

• Laura M. Justice, Ohio State University