Graduate Student Eastern Illinois University Savoy, Illinois, United States
Disclosure(s):
Alexa G. Hoffman, n/a: No financial or non-financial relationships to disclose
Abstract: This study compared social bid responses during structured conversation across 25 and 50 utterances from typically developing sixth graders. Response types were categorized as relevant, irrelevant, semantically related, acknowledgement, or no response. Data analysis revealed no significant difference between shorter and longer samples. Challenges and successes with data collection and analysis for social skills as well as implications for the practicing clinician will be discussed.
Summary of Presentation : To begin to provide normative data for social skills, this study collected data during socially based language sampling in typically developing middle schoolers. Three prompts adapted from a previous study were introduced to 12 sixth graders in a one-on-one setting. Prompts were discussed for approximately three minutes each with a focus on eliciting natural, casual conversation. Response types were categorized as relevant, irrelevant, semantically related, acknowledgement, or no response. A one-tailed, paired t-test was conducted on average percentages of both the percent response rate and percent of each response type across all participants between 25 and 50 utterances. Data was not significantly different between the 25-utterance and 50-utterance samples overall, suggesting smaller language samples may be just as reliable for gathering data on contingencies in conversation. More research is needed due to low sample size and lack of other supporting studies.
Learning Objectives:
At the completion of this activity, participants should be able to:
Participants will be able to discuss language sampling for social skill measurement purposes.
Participants will be able to describe different types of social bid responses in conversational language samples.
Participants will be able to evaluate the reliability of measuring social skills in language samples of different lengths.