Development of cooperative and competitive play responses in developmentally disabled children.

A behavior management procedure for training cooperative and competitive social play was investigated. Subjects were 5 EMR children who had marked behavior and communication disorders. Baseline data indicated that the subjects exhibited no competitive responses and low levels of cooperative play. Upon instituting a token-praise-feedback procedure, the experimenters observed increases in cooperative play as well as small increases in competitive play. Reinstating the token-feedback procedure after reversal resulted in high levels of competitive play with no change in cooperative play. Several explanations were offered to account for these results.