Increasing isolate and social play in severely disturbed children: intervention and postintervention effectiveness.

A group treatment procedure was instituted in Study 1 to increase the isolate and social play of 4 severely disturbed children. The results indicated that play behavior could be increased significantly by the use of food and social reinforcement and by the use of passive shaping, but that it quickly declined when the intervention was terminated. Social play, however, did remain above baseline levels during extinction. Study 2 replicated the results of Study 1 with a second group of older children, also severely disturbed. However, the procedure of fading adult intervention proved an effective method for increasing the resistance of social play to extinction relative to Study 1. A PROCEDURE OF CONtinuous and multiple-observer reliability assessment was employed for both studies, and the positive results and the methodological implications of the procedure are discussed.