Jeffrey M. Seibert

Assessing interactional competencies: The early social‐communication scales

Interactional competencies that develop in the first two years of life provide a foundation for all further social and communicative developments. Their normal acquisition, especially in the handicapped, can not be taken for granted. If delays in social-communicative development can be identified early in life and changes made in how the social environment interacts with the child, intervention may effectively facilitate social development. However, to accomplish this, both a model for describing and an instrument for assessing interactional competencies are needed. A recently developed set of scales, organized according to a cognitive-developmental framework and drawing upon recent research literature, is described in terms of its organization and content. Results that support the cognitive model underlying the set of scales are reported. The paper concludes with a consideration of potential criticisms that may apply to such a theoretically based instrument.

Linguistic pragmatics and language intervention strategies.

The recent research focus on pragmatics leads to the consideration of issues of language use that have fundamental practical implications for language assessment and intervention. Specifically, the pragmatic orientation suggests changes in the contentof language assessments, by evaluating various communicative functions the child expresses, and modifications in the processof language assessment, by encouraging both the initiating and responding dimensions of the childs communicative behavior. Furthermore, the pragmatic focus suggests changes in the process of intervention. The primary goal of intervention becomes facilitation of generalized communicative functions for which syntactic structures and semantic content are only the tools. And the pragmatic framework suggests guidelines for what constitute appropriate reinforcers that sustain rather than interrupt communicative interactions.

Mental age and cognitive stage in young handicapped and at-risk children

Abstract This research addressed the question of whether stage-related patterns of early cognitive development, reported for normally developing children in the first two and a half years of life, may also characterize the development of at-risk and handicapped children when mental age rather than chronological age is used to organize the data. Performance on a psychometric infant test and two neo-Piagetian-based stage measures was assessed for 95 at-risk and handicapped children. Mental age predicted cognitive level of performance for levels 1 to 3, representing the first year and a half of development, but did not predict the highest level, symbolic functioning. In addition, transition points between levels were observed at mental ages similar to the chronological ages when these transitions have been reported for normally developing infants, for all but the last level. The significance of the correspondence between the psychometric measure and the stage measures is discussed and several alternatives for the breakdown at the highest level are considered.

Novelty responding and behavioral development in young, developmentally delayed children

Abstract This study examined whether or not a measure of information processing ability based on the discrimination of novel and familiar stimuli was related to behavioral development among developmentally-delayed infants. Two samples of handicapped infants were administered multiple measures of visual novelty discrimination and a battery of assessments which were representative of available measures of development in infancy. The results indicated that, as a group, the developmentally delayed infants were capable of discriminating novel and familiar stimuli. Also, correlational analyses indicated that responding to novelty was related to developmental accessment performance in both samples. This finding is consistent with previous data which indicates that novelty response measures are associated with important individual differences in young children.

Assessing Social and Communication Skills in Infancy

This paper describes a set of scales designed to assess social and communication skills that an infant typically acquires in the first 30 months of life. The advantages and disadvantages of alternative methods for gathering the assessment information, ranging from caregiver interview to structured testing, are considered. One of the most critical aspects of the structured test, the role of the tester as an interactive partner for the infant, is discussed at length. The paper presents reliability data suggesting that the childs communication performance is highly stable over time with the same partner, but that there are substantial differences with different partners. The implications of the findings for assessment and intervention practices are noted.

Social and cognitive bases of early comprehension of object reference

In the present study, we investigated the performance patterns of 48 children between 6 and 17 months of age in order to explore the relationship between certain social and object-related skills and the early comprehension of linguistic object reference. All children were tested for (1) their understanding of anothers gestural attempts to direct their visual attention to locations either to the childs right or left side, or to 180 ° behind the child (joint attention skills); (2) their spontaneous use of functional and socially influenced action patterns (schemes) with objects on themselves, a doll and another person; and (3) their comprehension of object labels in a forced-choice vocabulary testing situation designed to control for context and chance performance. Objects used in the vocabulary test were selected for each child based on maternal report. Based on Werner and Kaplans (1963) framework for the development of linguistic object reference and published and unpublished reports, we predicted that all children credited with two or more words on the vocabulary test would follow anothers gaze or point to either side as well as behind themselves and would spontaneously demonstrate social schemes with objects on both themselves and on others. The results very strongly supported the hypotheses for the relationship of both of the joint attention skills and the social schemes on self to object label comprehension. The hypothesized relationship of schemes on others to object label comprehension was not unequivocally supported. Theoretical and practical implications of the results were discussed.

Pediatric AIDS/HIV Infection

Pediatric acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS) is a disease with social and political ramifications that affect both research and psychotherapy with children and families. This paper examines selected clinical and ethical issues psychologists may encounter in research or psychotherapy with children, adolescents, or parents who are positive for the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) antibody or have AIDS. A brief overview of AIDS-related research and future directions is presented with particular relevance to pediatric psychology.