Improving social communication assessment for adolescents at risk for communication disorders

项目摘要/摘要 社会沟通障碍在患有高发残疾的青少年中很常见 (Baribeau等人，2015年；Skuse等人，2009年；Storebo等人，2012年)，并导致成人结局不佳(NCWD， 2015年)。社会交际包括使语言适应语境(Rose-Krasnor，1997)。干预可以 提高社交技能，但要想有效，干预措施必须针对青少年的 相关背景下的当前能力水平(Cai&Richdale，2016；McCall，2015)。 为了计划有效的社会沟通干预，研究人员依赖于标准参考评估。 标准参考语言评估将考生的表现与表现标准进行比较，例如 作为掌握语法屈折变化的发展时间表。青少年社交的时间表 沟通发展没有被很好地理解，导致当前的社会沟通评估 用另一种标准来解释表现，例如专家对适当或不适当的判断 回应。其他人则通过使用Rasch或IRT分析来确定绩效水平 确定项目难度。目前还没有青少年社交能力评估来决定成绩 通过将考生的表现与经过验证的解释性框架的级别进行比较来确定级别 由经验决定的项目难度。 目前的评估并不是为了确定青少年的社会沟通能力水平 过渡到毕业后的环境，如就业或独立生活。证据表明有多少背景 影响社会沟通的措施是有限的。 为了解决社交交流评估中的这些差距，过渡语用学访谈(TPI；Poll& Petru，2018)已经开发出来。该项目的目标是测试TPI的设计，将其与 考生的能力水平，以一个经验验证的解释框架。TPI的项目将设计为 根据解释框架、情景-话语-语义模型的不同，难度会有所不同。 基于对改进的TPI题集的现场测试，将使用Rasch分析来评估项目的难度。级别 将被评估为项目难度的预测因子。要评估环境如何影响 社会沟通，现场测试参与者将接受TPI的四个子量表的评估，每个子量表侧重于 放学后的环境。RASCH分析将用于确定每个课后环境的参与者能力 一个相当的刻度。最后，将对TPI的每个关注上下文的分量表进行评估，以确定 它们的维度。综上所述，这些将是发展心理测量学健全的重要一步 为过渡干预计划量身定做的青少年社会沟通措施。

Project Summary/Abstract Social communication deficits are common in adolescents with high-prevalence developmental disabilities (Baribeau et al, 2015; Skuse et al, 2009; Storebo et al, 2012), and contribute to poor adult outcomes (NCWD, 2015). Social communication involves adapting language to a context (Rose-Krasnor, 1997). Intervention can improve social communication skills, but to be effective, interventions must be tailored to the adolescent’s current level of ability for relevant contexts (Cai & Richdale, 2016; McCall, 2015). To plan effective social communication interventions, researchers rely on criterion-referenced assessments. Criterion-referenced language assessments compare examinee performance to a performance standard, such as the developmental timetable for mastering grammatical inflections. The timetable for adolescent social communication development is not well understood, leading current social communication assessments to interpret performance by another standard, such as expert judgments of appropriate or inappropriate responses. Others have determined performance level by using Rasch or IRT analyses to empirically determine item difficulty. No current adolescent social communication assessments determine performance levels by comparing examinee performance to levels of an interpretive framework that has been validated by empirically-determined item difficulty. Current assessments are not designed to identify adolescents’ level of social communication ability for the transition to post-school contexts such as employment or independent living. Evidence on how much context affects measures of social communication is limited. To address these gaps in social communication assessments, the Transition Pragmatics Interview (TPI; Poll & Petru, 2018) has been developed. The goal of this project is to test the design of the TPI as comparing the examinee’s ability level to an empirically-validated interpretive framework. Items of the TPI will be designed to vary in difficulty based on the levels of the interpretive framework, the Situational-Discourse-Semantics model. Based on a field test of this refined TPI item set, item difficulty will be evaluated using Rasch analyses. Levels of the interpretive framework will be evaluated as predictors of item difficulty. To evaluate how context affects social communication, field test participants will be evaluated with four subscales of the TPI, each focused on a post-school context. Rasch analyses will used to determine participant abilities for each post-school context on an equivalent scale. Finally, the context-focused sub-scales of the TPI will each be evaluated to determine their dimensionality. Taken together, these will be major steps in the development of a psychometrically-sound measure of adolescent social communication tailored to transition intervention planning.