Academically capable youth with disabilities often have daily functioning challenges that impact adulthood outcomes. The studies in this dissertation address this concern by focusing specifically on a particular area of challenge: the ability to take over the decision making, problem solving, and organization needed to carry out complex daily life tasks in real life contexts. The purpose of the two studies were to: (1) distinguish deficits in discrete skills from challenges organizing skills to self-manage complex tasks associated with adult roles and (2) explore the extent to which challenges in social, cognitive and behavioral factors relate to self-management of daily life tasks. In Study 1, data from the National Longitudinal Transition Study-2 (NLTS2) were analyzed using a structural equation modeling approach to test associations between executive functioning, behavioral health, and social communication skills and self-management of daily life tasks in youth who graduated with a high school diploma. The model findings were compared with an alternate model testing the associations of the underlying factors and discrete functional skills. Study 1 findings indicated that challenges in underlying factors in diploma-track youth with disabilities are more strongly associated with the ability to self-manage life tasks, supporting the conceptual distinction between daily task management and discrete, foundational functional skills. While this study provided a generalizable model of factors associated with management of life tasks for academically capable youth with disabilities, this study was limited in that the variables were not specifically tailored to the constructs of interest, thus providing a broad, yet possibly imprecise picture of the relationships among these variables. Study 2 expanded on Study 1, providing a more detailed investigation of the factors associated with self-management of daily life tasks by using measures that were specifically selected to represent metacognition, internalizing behaviors, and social communication skills within a sample of academically capable autistic youth (N= 46). Study findings suggested that all three factors are associated with the ability to manage complex tasks, with executive functioning partially mediating the association between social communication skills and internalizing behaviors on task management. Together, the study findings confirm self-management of daily life tasks as a distinct area of challenge for academically capable youth with disabilities and provide a more detailed understanding of what is breaking down in the process of learning to manage life tasks and participate in valued adult roles. These findings can ultimately provide guidance on how to design targeted interventions in order to enable participation in independent living and productivity for academically capable youth with disabilities as well as highlight a potential target for outcome measurement in intervention studies that aim to improve daily life functioning and participation in the community. / 2023-09-27T00:00:00Z

No description available.

Although social anxiety disorder is most often diagnosed during adolescence, few investigations have examined the clinical presentation of this disorder exclusively in adolescents. Prior studies have demonstrated that some clinical features of SAD in adolescents are unique relative to younger children with the condition. Furthermore, the extant literature on daily functional impairment in this population is limited. In this investigation, multiple areas of functioning were examined in adolescents with SAD (n = 16) and normal control adolescents (n = 14): specific social skills, subjective distress and physiological reactivity during one speech performance task and one social interaction task; alcohol use and expectancies; subjective and objective quality of sleep; and daily distressing social activities. No differences were observed in sleep actigraphy, self-reported sleep difficulties, alcohol use, or alcohol expectancies. Adolescents with SAD reported greater distress during both analogue tasks relative to NC adolescents. During the speech task, adolescents with SAD exhibited significantly greater speech latency (4.42 seconds vs. 1.75 seconds) and spoke significantly less (83.09 seconds vs. 167.75 seconds) than NC adolescents. Additionally, SAD participants manifested greater skin conductance during the speech task. During the social interaction, adolescents with SAD asked significantly fewer questions (2.20 vs. 7.07) and required significantly more confederate prompts (2.33 vs. 1.14) to stimulate interaction. Finally, adolescents with SAD reported more frequent anxiety-provoking situations in their daily lives and greater avoidance of these situations, including answering questions in class, assertive communication, and interacting with a group. iv The findings are discussed with respect to the current understanding of alcohol use, quality of sleep, and social functioning in adolescents with SAD.