Journal of Motor Learning and Development, Apr 1, 2021
The motor and social skill difficulties experienced by many children with autism spectrum disorde... more The motor and social skill difficulties experienced by many children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) can create challenges when participating in age appropriate physical activity contexts. Although behavioral interventions can increase the general social communicative skills of children with ASD, often the skills targeted are not relevant to physical activity contexts. Thus, this pilot study utilized a movement-based intervention program to support children with ASD in learning both social and movement skills that are relevant to physical activity contexts. Nineteen children with ASD with a mean age of 9.3 (±3.0) years participated in this program for 8 weeks, twice a week, at a recreation center as an afterschool activity. Six object control skills were selected and tested before and after the intervention because these gross motor skills were considered to elicit human interactions and place demands on social skills. Ten social skills were selected, aligned to each program context, taught, and evaluated. This intervention resulted in significant improvements in object-control skills for the participants. Additionally, there were significantly more participants who demonstrated improvements in their performance of the target social skills than who did not demonstrate improvements. These preliminary findings provide support for the feasibility of developing interventions that address social skill deficits in the context of physically active settings for children with ASD.
Journal of Psychoeducational Assessment, Jan 21, 2022
In this article, we report on the development of two latent soft skills progress variables using ... more In this article, we report on the development of two latent soft skills progress variables using the Berkeley Evaluation and Assessment Research (BEAR) Assessment System (BAS). The Social Evaluative Reasoning in the Workplace (SER-W) instrument uses comic strip scenarios to depict interactions between employees and customers in entry-level workplace settings. We designed items to elicit evidence of student ability to: (a) identify salient customer social cues, which we term the social cue detection (SPU) variable, and, (b) justify an evaluation on the outcome of the situation depicted in the scenarios. We refer to this as the evaluative inference (EI) variable. Research from the field of autism spectrum disorder was used to develop a theory for building social complexity into the SER-W comic strip scenarios, by manipulating the type, frequency, and co-occurrence of the social cues presented in the scenarios. A unidimensional and multidimensional extension of the Rasch partial credit model were fit to the data. Model comparisons provide empirical support for our hypothesized two-dimensional structure, in which the SPU and EI variables are modeled as separate dimensions. These results are considered in terms of the evidence for the validity of the internal structure of the SER-W dimensions they provide. The article concludes with examples of the practical implications that progress variable research can have on soft skills curriculum development and assessment in the field of special education.
The motor and social skill difficulties experienced by many children with autism spectrum disorde... more The motor and social skill difficulties experienced by many children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) can create challenges when participating in age appropriate physical activity contexts. Although behavioral interventions can increase the general social communicative skills of children with ASD, often the skills targeted are not relevant to physical activity contexts. Thus, this pilot study utilized a movement-based intervention program to support children with ASD in learning both social and movement skills that are relevant to physical activity contexts. Nineteen children with ASD with a mean age of 9.3 (±3.0) years participated in this program for 8 weeks, twice a week, at a recreation center as an afterschool activity. Six object control skills were selected and tested before and after the intervention because these gross motor skills were considered to elicit human interactions and place demands on social skills. Ten social skills were selected, aligned to each program con...
Author(s): Jolin, Jerred M | Advisor(s): Wilson, Mark; Wolfberg, Pamela | Abstract: While assessm... more Author(s): Jolin, Jerred M | Advisor(s): Wilson, Mark; Wolfberg, Pamela | Abstract: While assessments of general social proficiency constructs are numerous in the ASD literature, and in the special education literature more broadly, investigations of the latent structure(s) of vocational-specific social proficiency constructs have yet to receive serious empirical investigation. Furthermore, trends in this literature point to a number of measurement-related issues that include: item/construct incongruity in the development of instruments; inconsistent representations of the role of context in instruments; relatively outdated approaches to instrument design and analysis of item response data; and lack of evidence for the internal structure of measurement variables in arguments for validity. Finally, the notion of learning progressions in the assessment of social proficiency, and potential models of cognition that underpin them, are not generally considered or empirically tested in thi...
In this article, we report on the development of two latent soft skills progress variables using ... more In this article, we report on the development of two latent soft skills progress variables using the Berkeley Evaluation and Assessment Research (BEAR) Assessment System (BAS). The Social Evaluative Reasoning in the Workplace (SER-W) instrument uses comic strip scenarios to depict interactions between employees and customers in entry-level workplace settings. We designed items to elicit evidence of student ability to: (a) identify salient customer social cues, which we term the social cue detection (SPU) variable, and, (b) justify an evaluation on the outcome of the situation depicted in the scenarios. We refer to this as the evaluative inference (EI) variable. Research from the field of autism spectrum disorder was used to develop a theory for building social complexity into the SER-W comic strip scenarios, by manipulating the type, frequency, and co-occurrence of the social cues presented in the scenarios. A unidimensional and multidimensional extension of the Rasch partial credit...
Journal of Motor Learning and Development, Apr 1, 2021
The motor and social skill difficulties experienced by many children with autism spectrum disorde... more The motor and social skill difficulties experienced by many children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) can create challenges when participating in age appropriate physical activity contexts. Although behavioral interventions can increase the general social communicative skills of children with ASD, often the skills targeted are not relevant to physical activity contexts. Thus, this pilot study utilized a movement-based intervention program to support children with ASD in learning both social and movement skills that are relevant to physical activity contexts. Nineteen children with ASD with a mean age of 9.3 (±3.0) years participated in this program for 8 weeks, twice a week, at a recreation center as an afterschool activity. Six object control skills were selected and tested before and after the intervention because these gross motor skills were considered to elicit human interactions and place demands on social skills. Ten social skills were selected, aligned to each program context, taught, and evaluated. This intervention resulted in significant improvements in object-control skills for the participants. Additionally, there were significantly more participants who demonstrated improvements in their performance of the target social skills than who did not demonstrate improvements. These preliminary findings provide support for the feasibility of developing interventions that address social skill deficits in the context of physically active settings for children with ASD.
Journal of Psychoeducational Assessment, Jan 21, 2022
In this article, we report on the development of two latent soft skills progress variables using ... more In this article, we report on the development of two latent soft skills progress variables using the Berkeley Evaluation and Assessment Research (BEAR) Assessment System (BAS). The Social Evaluative Reasoning in the Workplace (SER-W) instrument uses comic strip scenarios to depict interactions between employees and customers in entry-level workplace settings. We designed items to elicit evidence of student ability to: (a) identify salient customer social cues, which we term the social cue detection (SPU) variable, and, (b) justify an evaluation on the outcome of the situation depicted in the scenarios. We refer to this as the evaluative inference (EI) variable. Research from the field of autism spectrum disorder was used to develop a theory for building social complexity into the SER-W comic strip scenarios, by manipulating the type, frequency, and co-occurrence of the social cues presented in the scenarios. A unidimensional and multidimensional extension of the Rasch partial credit model were fit to the data. Model comparisons provide empirical support for our hypothesized two-dimensional structure, in which the SPU and EI variables are modeled as separate dimensions. These results are considered in terms of the evidence for the validity of the internal structure of the SER-W dimensions they provide. The article concludes with examples of the practical implications that progress variable research can have on soft skills curriculum development and assessment in the field of special education.
The motor and social skill difficulties experienced by many children with autism spectrum disorde... more The motor and social skill difficulties experienced by many children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) can create challenges when participating in age appropriate physical activity contexts. Although behavioral interventions can increase the general social communicative skills of children with ASD, often the skills targeted are not relevant to physical activity contexts. Thus, this pilot study utilized a movement-based intervention program to support children with ASD in learning both social and movement skills that are relevant to physical activity contexts. Nineteen children with ASD with a mean age of 9.3 (±3.0) years participated in this program for 8 weeks, twice a week, at a recreation center as an afterschool activity. Six object control skills were selected and tested before and after the intervention because these gross motor skills were considered to elicit human interactions and place demands on social skills. Ten social skills were selected, aligned to each program con...
Author(s): Jolin, Jerred M | Advisor(s): Wilson, Mark; Wolfberg, Pamela | Abstract: While assessm... more Author(s): Jolin, Jerred M | Advisor(s): Wilson, Mark; Wolfberg, Pamela | Abstract: While assessments of general social proficiency constructs are numerous in the ASD literature, and in the special education literature more broadly, investigations of the latent structure(s) of vocational-specific social proficiency constructs have yet to receive serious empirical investigation. Furthermore, trends in this literature point to a number of measurement-related issues that include: item/construct incongruity in the development of instruments; inconsistent representations of the role of context in instruments; relatively outdated approaches to instrument design and analysis of item response data; and lack of evidence for the internal structure of measurement variables in arguments for validity. Finally, the notion of learning progressions in the assessment of social proficiency, and potential models of cognition that underpin them, are not generally considered or empirically tested in thi...
In this article, we report on the development of two latent soft skills progress variables using ... more In this article, we report on the development of two latent soft skills progress variables using the Berkeley Evaluation and Assessment Research (BEAR) Assessment System (BAS). The Social Evaluative Reasoning in the Workplace (SER-W) instrument uses comic strip scenarios to depict interactions between employees and customers in entry-level workplace settings. We designed items to elicit evidence of student ability to: (a) identify salient customer social cues, which we term the social cue detection (SPU) variable, and, (b) justify an evaluation on the outcome of the situation depicted in the scenarios. We refer to this as the evaluative inference (EI) variable. Research from the field of autism spectrum disorder was used to develop a theory for building social complexity into the SER-W comic strip scenarios, by manipulating the type, frequency, and co-occurrence of the social cues presented in the scenarios. A unidimensional and multidimensional extension of the Rasch partial credit...
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