Effects of socialization games on proximity and prosocial behavior of aggressive mentally retarded institutionalized women

Socialization games, designed to reinforce prosocial behavior between moderately and severely mentally retarded aggressive institutionalized women, were presented to two groups on 12 occasions over 8 weeks, randomly interspersed with 12 sessions of arts and crafts or filmstrip stories. Half of the sessions were presented in the morning and half in the afternoon. Video-taped observations of interpersonal behavior for 10 minutes after each session were analyzed in terms of friendly, unfriendly, and inactive behavior, and the distance of each subject from each other subject was measured. The rate of friendly behavior was significantly greater after the games and was higher in morning than afternoon sessions. The games also significantly decreased interpersonal distance. Both unfriendly behavior and inactivity were higher after the "placebo" sessions. The relevance of these results to institutional programming was discussed.