Children with language impairment (LI) have often been identified as having social communication breakdowns. A number of these problems are likely the result of deficits in emotional competence. This thesis examines a social communication intervention designed to target the emotional competence of children with LI. Three elementary school-aged children with LI were recruited to receive twenty, 20-minute intervention sessions over the course of four months. Each intervention session involved a combination of activities targeting emotion recognition and emotion inferencing using story retell, story exploration, story enactment, perspectives charts, journal entries, emotion labeling, and personalization. These activities revolved around Mercer Mayer's A Boy, A Dog, and A Frog (1967) wordless picture book series. These books were used because of their age-appropriate subject matter and clear, simple depictions of character actions and facial expressions. To analyze the effectiveness of this intervention package in improving emotional competence, the number of emotion-based words belonging to the emotional categories of happiness, sadness, anger, fear, surprise, and disgust that were produced each session was counted. The percentage of appropriate usage was calculated to represent how often the participants used each emotion-based word in a semantically correct manner. Finally, emotion word productions that did not match the intended target word were analyzed for valence agreement. Results were highly variable but all three participants demonstrated improvements in the percentage of accurate productions in at least one emotional category. Although all three participants usually used words of a positive valence in an appropriate manner, inappropriate uses were also observed. When actual emotion-word productions mismatched the intended emotions, all three participants produced low valence agreement for words of positive valence and high valence agreement for words of negative valence. Further research is warranted but results suggested that this particular social communication intervention was effective in improving the production of specific emotion words by children with LI.

Children with language impairment (LI) often demonstrate difficulties in social communication. The purpose of this pilot study was to examine the quantity and quality of the social interactions of children with LI and their typical peers through an analysis of the social networks or circles of each child. Eight children with LI as well as eight children with typically developing language and their parents were interviewed. Children's social networks were organized by social circles to effectively paint a picture of each child's social communication (Blackstone & Hunt Berg, 2003). Children with LI were found to have overall fewer contacts in their social circles than children with typical language; they also interacted with fewer peers than did children with typical language. The children with LI interacted with more adults who were paid or obligated to interact with them than did their typical peers. Information about the nature of social interactions of children with LI as well as those of children with typical language was obtained from parent interviews. Qualitative observations from the parent interviews demonstrated that the Internet was not used as a significant mode of communication for children in this age group, although the children who used it to communicate were all from the Typical group. Most parents reported that children spent the most time and talked the most with immediate family members. A greater number of parents of children with LI than parents of children with typical language skills reported their children to have people they would like to talk to but did not. Parents of children with LI also reported their children to use fewer topics in conversation than were reported by parents of their typical peers. With few exceptions, parents of children in both groups reported that their children talked mostly about concrete rather than abstract topics. More parents of children with LI than those with typical language indicated that their children had topics they would like to talk about but did not or lacked the ability to do so.

Children with language impairment (LI) often exhibit social difficulties along with language issues that can affect their friendships with peers. This study sought to identify the self-reported social networks of children with LI and compare them to the self-reported social networks of children with typical language development. Sixteen children with LI (9 girls and 7 boys) between the ages of 5-11 years, and sixteen children with typical language development matched for age and gender were studied. Children were asked to name interactants in four social circles (Blackstone & Hunt Berg, 2003): family, friends, acquaintances, and paid interactants. A parent also completed a shortened version of this questionnaire. Additionally, children completed an informal picture task (Fujiki, Brinton, & Todd, 1996) to determine the number of peers they interacted with in various activities (e.g., eating lunch at school). The number of family and close friends named by children in each group did not significantly differ. Children with typical language skills did name more interactional partners who were considered to be casual peer acquaintances and paid interactants than did the children with LI. Parent and child responses differed on several of the comparisons. The groups also differed on the number of peers named on the picture task activity, replicating previous results.

This thesis examines a social communication intervention that targets the emotional competence of children with language impairment (LI). Three elementary school-aged children with LI received twenty, 20-minute intervention sessions over four months. Each intervention session involved a combination of activities targeting emotion recognition and emotion inferencing. The emotion-based word productions were counted and analyzed. Categorized words belonged to the emotional categories of happiness, sadness, anger, fear, surprise, and disgust. The percentage of appropriate usage was calculated to represent how often the participants used each emotion-based word in a semantically correct manner. Emotion word productions that did not match the intended target word were analyzed for valence agreement. Results were variable but two of the participants improved in the percentage of accurate productions in at least one emotional category while one participant did not improve over the intervention. Two of the participants also showed a decrease in the number of valence errors with no notable change in valence errors for the third participant. This suggests that this type of intervention can be effective in improving the use of emotion-based words in children with LI. More research is needed to develop this type of intervention.

Children with Developmental Language Disorder (DLD) often have difficulties with social and emotional learning, including emotion understanding and inferencing. Five children with DLD, ages 6;4 to 11;9, identified emotions depicted in pictured scenarios over a period of 10 weeks. Emotion categories included happy, sad, anger, fear, surprise, and disgust. Each child's responses were analyzed and plotted on a confusion matrix. In a few cases, children did not interpret the scenario accurately. Even when they interpreted the scenario accurately, all of the children misapplied, overgeneralized, or confused emotion labels in some cases. These errors represented limitations in social and emotional learning that could negatively impact the ability to interact with others, to establish and maintain relationships, and to succeed academically.

This study employed the Teacher Behavior Rating Scale (TBRS) to investigate two aspects of sociability, likeability and prosocial behavior, in 143 children with developmental language disorder (DLD) and 131 of their typically developing peers. Initially, measurement invariance analysis was performed to determine if teachers evaluated likeability and sociability in a similar manner for both children with DLD and their typically developing peers. Likeability items on the TBRS were invariant, and 4 of the 5 prosociability items were invariant. Subsequent analysis revealed that teachers rated children with DLD lower in both likeability and prosociability in comparison to their typically developing peers. The results of this study suggest that children with DLD are not fully accepted by their peers, nor do they engage in the helpful, comforting behaviors that encourage peer acceptance and build friendships.

Den här studien undersöker hur fritidshemspersonalen upplever att de påverkas av resurserna som de har att tillgå och hur de kompenserar för eventuella brister. Studien är kvalitativ och vi har använt oss av intervjuer som metod. Tre lärare mot fritidshem intervjuades och berättade om hur de arbetar för att skapa kvalitativ undervisning på fritidshemmet. Resultatet visade att man inte alls ser de materiella resurserna som de viktiga utan ser en större vikt i personalen och kollegorna i verksamheten. Kollegorna på fritidshemmet är även en stor motivationsfaktor. Fritidshemmen lägger enligt personalen som intervjuats stor vikt vid det sociala lärandet och lägger ner mycket tid på det. Utifrån studien som har gjorts får vi uppfattningen att de socioekonomiska skillnaderna mellan de olika områdena också speglar sig i undervisningen på fritidshemmet. Fritidshemmet som har ett välutvecklat utvecklingsarbete har också bättre förutsättningar att genomföra kvalitativ undervisning med kollegialt lärande som stor styrka i det arbetet. Att lärare mot fritidshem samarbetar för att skapa goda förutsättningar på skolan är också en framgångsnyckel för kvalitativ undervisning. / This study investigates how after-school staff feel they are affected by the resources available to them and how they compensate for any deficiencies. The study is qualitative and we have used interviews as a method. Three school-age educare teachers were interviewed and talked about how they work to create quality teaching at the school-age educare. The result showed that the material resources are not seen as important at all but see a greater importance in the staff and colleagues in the business. The colleagues at the leisure center are also a great motivational factor. According to the teachers, school-age educare attach great importance to social learning and spend a lot of time on it. Based on the study that has been conducted, we can see that the socio-economic differences between the different areas are also reflected in the school and the teaching at the school-age educare. The school-age educare that has a well-developed development work also has better conditions to conduct qualitative teaching with collegial learning as a major strength in that work. That teachers at school-age educare cooperate to create good conditions at the school is also a key to success for quality teaching.

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