Preschoolers With Special Needs Benefit From Peers’ Strong Language Skills

http://www.psychologicalscience.org/index.php/news/releases/preschoolers-with-special-needs-benefit-from-peers-strong-language-skills.html?utm_source=pressrelease&utm_medium=eureka&utm_campaign=peereffectslanguage

July 28, 2014

The guiding philosophy for educating children with disabilities has been to integrate them as much as possible into a normal classroom environment, with the hope that peers’ skills will help bring them up to speed. A new study provides empirical evidence that peers really can have an impact on a child’s language abilities, for better or worse.

While peers with strong language skills can help boost their classmates’ abilities, being surrounded by peers with weak skills may hinder kids’ language development.

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The researchers found that preschoolers with special needs were more influenced by their peers’ language skills than were children without disabilities. Children with disabilities whose classmates had weak language skills showed the strongest effects – by spring, their language skills lagged far behind those of typically developing children.

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The researchers believe that when kids play together and interact in the classroom, they naturally imitate each other’s behaviors, which in turn helps them to develop language skills such as “taking turns in conversation, communicating their needs and wants, and producing narratives.”

“If peer effects operate as our work suggests they do, it is very important to consider how to organize children in classrooms so that their opportunities to learn from one another is maximized – and so that young children with disabilities are not segregated into classroom serving only those with special needs,” says Justice.

Justice and colleagues conclude that regardless of disability, classrooms in which most children have poor language skills are not ideal. They suggest that since typically developing kids continue to improve their language skills even when they have some less-skilled classmates, administrators should aim for a diversity of skill level in the classroom.

Co-authors on the study include Jessica A. R. Logan and Tzu-Jung Lin of The Ohio State University and Joan N. Kaderavek of the University of Toledo.