Emotional disorders are common in people with brain damage. It is often difficult to determine whether such disorders are a result of a deficit in recognition, expression, or regulation of emotion due to brain damage per se, or if they are reactive to other functional limitations. The Victoria Emotion Recognition Test (VERT) was developed to provide a standardized tool for the assessment of deficits in the recognition of facial and tonal affect. The VERT was constructed on the basis of neurophysiological and behavioural theories of emotion and neuropsychological theories of agnosia. The VERT consists of three subtests in which four emotions (angry, sad, happy and afraid) are presented at three levels of intensity. The visual subtest presents photographs of faces; the auditory subtest, audiotaped voice clips; and the auditory/visual subtest, both photographs and voice clips. Psychometric results of the standardization studies suggest that the VERT measures an aspect of the recognition of facial and tonal emotion that is independent of more basic skills in face recognition and auditory nonverbal memory. The theoretical construct of recognition of emotion was investigated within the framework of an "affective agnosia". The results suggest that a broader concept of agnosia is necessary in order to include failures in recognition of emotion within this framework. / Graduate

Social competence is needed for interaction among peers, teachers, and families in order for children to be successful in school. Children enter school with various levels of social competence. Social skills training is an effective method for building social skills; however, many programs fail to generalize these skills across settings and time. This study investigated the effects of a social skills training intervention for first and second grade students with emotional and behavioral problems. The intervention blended direct instruction, role-plays, and children's literature, with peers supporting both the acquisition and generalization of the social skills through positive peer reporting (PPR) in other school settings. Results indicate that four students, with or at-risk for emotional and behavioral disorder, in the first and second grade, produced an increased rate of the acquisition and generalization of the skills, How to Follow Directions, How to Ignore Distractions, and How to Ask for Help across various settings with the support of the social skills instruction paired with PPR. This demonstrates that elements of bibliotherapy paired with positive peer reporting may be effective in increasing the acquisition and generalization of social skills across multiple settings.