Aims: The aim of the presentation is to show results of the evaluation of a program for the development of social skills, called Play Time/Social Time (PTST; Odom et al., 1997), undertaken in Polish preschools.
Method: The study was a quasi-experiment. Over 150 preschoolers participated in the intervention: Children with disabilities (autism, intellectual, physical, and sensory disabilities), children with low social skills but without disabilities, as well as normally developed children. The intervention lasted 5 months. We assessed children's social skills three times during the program implementation: before the program started, after first 28 days and at the end. We observed whether there are changes in children's social skills after participation in the PTST program. We assessed the effectiveness of the intervention by using growth curve modelling and ANOVA repeated measures.
Results: Both methods demonstrated positive effects of the program, with high effect size. Additionally, we found the PTST to be especially effective in developing social skills of children with disabilities and with low social skills. 4.
Conclusions: The findings provide potentially important consequences for the development of social skills among children with disabilities and children who display behavioral problems. Specifically, it demonstrates that the PTST, as a very effective program, may be introduced among very young children.