Shy children often have difficulty communicating; however, it is not clear whether these difficulties stem from a skills deficit or from an anxiety-driven performance deficit. Therefore, the present study examined how shy children’s communication skills differed from those of average, non-shy children, using the Internet as a medium for social communication. It was hypothesized that shy children may be more reticent than average children to initiate conversation in a novel situation. However, over time shy children were expected to become more comfortable in discussions with their on-line partner and to become less anxious as they acknowledge the anonymity of chat groups. This study also investigated potential changes in negative effects associated with shyness over time. Fifteen shy children (Mean shyness score=72.3; SD=6.43) and 15 average children (Mean shyness score=53.7; SD=5.6) participated in the 10 MSN conversation groups. Children were also given a series of questionnaires prior to and after the 10 sessions. Results from this study suggest that shy children communicate in a similar manner to their average partners when online. Results also suggest that shy children had higher levels of social anxiety than average children before beginning an online conversation with an unknown partner. However, by the end of the 10 sessions, their anxiety had been significantly reduced. No other changes or differences in psychological functioning were noted between shy and average children.

No description available.

Shy children often have difficulty communicating; however, it is not clear whether these difficulties stem from a skills deficit or from an anxiety-driven performance deficit. Therefore, the present study examined how shy children’s communication skills differed from those of average, non-shy children, using the Internet as a medium for social communication. It was hypothesized that shy children may be more reticent than average children to initiate conversation in a novel situation. However, over time shy children were expected to become more comfortable in discussions with their on-line partner and to become less anxious as they acknowledge the anonymity of chat groups. This study also investigated potential changes in negative effects associated with shyness over time. Fifteen shy children (Mean shyness score=72.3; SD=6.43) and 15 average children (Mean shyness score=53.7; SD=5.6) participated in the 10 MSN conversation groups. Children were also given a series of questionnaires prior to and after the 10 sessions. Results from this study suggest that shy children communicate in a similar manner to their average partners when online. Results also suggest that shy children had higher levels of social anxiety than average children before beginning an online conversation with an unknown partner. However, by the end of the 10 sessions, their anxiety had been significantly reduced. No other changes or differences in psychological functioning were noted between shy and average children.

No description available.

This study examined the effects of low dose exposure to a humanoid robot on the social engagement skills of four children with autism during select activities with a familiar adult. Participants included two males and two females who ranged in age from four to nine at the commencement of the study. The current study was part of a larger investigation focused on the effect of exposure to a robot on social engagement with a variety of social partners and situations. Children participated in variable multiple baseline sessions followed by a varied number of sessions of traditional treatment. After traditional treatment, the children participated in 40 minutes of traditional intervention paired with 10 minutes of exposure to a robot designed to elicit social communication skills. The final sessions consisted of follow up assessments. Pre- and posttreatment data were compared and analyzed. Results showed variable performance for each of the participants. Findings and areas of future research are discussed.

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No description available.

Children diagnosed with Language Impairment (LI) often have difficulty with aspects of social communication. This thesis evaluates the effects of a social communication intervention focused on facilitating the correct production of emotion words in four elementary school-aged children with LI. Researchers monitored changes from pretreatment baseline data, through the intervention, and ended with posttreatment follow-up data for the emotions happiness, surprise, fear, anger, sadness, and disgust. Based on baseline measures, emotion categories in which the child showed limited proficiency were targeted for the 20 intervention sessions. The emotions targeted were different for each child. Each intervention session contained a combination of storybook therapeutic strategies such as story enactment, story sharing, and modeling by the clinician to help increase the child's emotion understanding. The child participated in emotion recognition and emotion inferencing tasks. The data for each participant was analyzed individually and formatted into figures. Data analyzation was performed using percentage of non-overlapping data (PND) which provided insight into how successful the intervention was for each of the targeted emotions. The results of each child's emotion based words were varied, some participants making good progress and others showing little or no gains. These results suggest that the intervention was effective for some of the children and should continued to be refined.

Many school-age children with a diagnosis of Language Impairment (LI) also have social communication difficulties. Some of these difficulties are related to deficits in emotion understanding. This thesis evaluates the effects of a social communication intervention designed to increase the production of emotion-based words as an indicator of emotional competence. For five elementary school-aged children with LI, the production of emotion-based words was analyzed by first determining the frequency of words produced in preintervention sessions for the following categories: happiness, sadness, anger, fear, surprise, and disgust. Following these measures, the participants received 20 intervention sessions over the course of treatment. Treatment involved the use of narratives to address emotion recognition and inferencing abilities. Individual analyses for each participant, including percent of nonoverlapping data (PND), were conducted for each participant in the categories of anger, fear, and surprise, to determine the effects on the production of emotion-based words during the intervention. The results for each participant and emotion category varied greatly, but each participant demonstrated improvement in the PND for at least one emotion category. These results were promising and underscore the value of social communication intervention for children with LI in the area of emotion understanding.

Historically, social communication approaches to intervention for children with developmental language disorders (DLD) have been limited. However, several recent studies have shown that these interventions can produce positive changes in children with DLD. One weakness that children with DLD demonstrate is the production of words to express emotion. This thesis evaluates the effectiveness of a story-based social communication intervention to increase the production of emotion words in three elementary school-age children diagnosed with DLD. Data were collected and analyzed in pre-treatment baseline sessions, throughout the intervention, and in post-treatment follow-up data for the seven target emotion word categories of happiness, surprise, fear, anger, sadness, disgust, and contempt. The specific targeted emotion word categories were determined based on individual participants limited proficiency during baseline sessions. Thus, the emotions targeted were unique to each child. Intervention consisted of 40 intervention sessions using a combination of storybook therapeutic strategies (e.g., story enactment, story sharing, and modeling by the clinician to help increase the child's emotion understanding) as well as emotion recognition and emotion inferencing tasks. Each participants data were analyzed and presented in figures. The percentage of non-overlapping data (PND) was used in data analysis, quantifying how successful the intervention was for each of the targeted emotions. While the target emotion word categories varied between participants, all of the children showed improvement in the targeted emotions. While the intervention was more effective for some children than others, all increased in their ability to use the target emotion words more accurately as a result of participating in intervention.