Teaching Job-Related Social Skills to Learning Disabled Adolescents

Abstract

Previous research has indicated that LD adolescents perform poorly on a test of employment-related social skills (Mathews, Whang, & Fawcett, in press). The purpose of this study was to evaluate the effects of training procedures designed to teach various job-related social skills to learning disabled adolescents. Six job-related social skills were trained using written instructional materials and role-playing practice to criterion. The results showed that the learning disabled adolescents performed the skills in role-playing situations better after training than before training. Generalization measures taken at the adolescents place of employment also suggest the generality of the training effects to actual work environments.