Learning patterns in social skills training programs : an exploratory study

While Social Skills Training programs have been shown to improve the social skills of children with Disruptive Behaviour Disorders, the pattern of change in the participants’ learning during the training period remains unknown. Identifying this pattern could assist in determining whether more or less training hours are required to maximize the benefits of such programs within available resources. The current study aimed to replicate the social skills improvements found in previous research, and to explore the pattern of improvements in social knowledge and social performance that occurs during a Social Skills Training program. Two groups of eight males with behavioural problems attended 14 one-hour sessions of Social Skills Training. Multisources, multisettings and multimethods were used to measure social knowledge and social performance across five test phases. Multivariate analyses did not support previous findings showing overall improvements in social knowledge and social performance. Patterns of learning were not found to be consistent across different measures.