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Children with social communication disorders have been found to exhibit deficits in emotional intelligence, including the ability to identify emotions attributed to facial expressions. The purpose of this thesis was to examine the efficacy of a social communication intervention program designed to increase the accuracy of emotion based word use in three elementary school-aged participants with social communication disorders. The participants took part in a multiple-baseline, 20-session treatment including story enactment, journaling procedures, and supplementary activities. The story enactment portion of the intervention centered on Mercer Mayer's A Boy, A Dog, and A Frog (1967) wordless picture book series. Participants' emotion word productions were analyzed in six categories (happiness, sadness, anger, fear, surprise, and disgust) and valence accuracy was determined for all productions. Results proved variable, but each of the three participants demonstrated improvements in accuracy in at least two emotion categories that were not mastered prior to the onset of the intervention. In addition, two of the three participants increased in valence accuracy of emotion word productions between baseline and follow-up measures. Taken as a whole, the results suggest that this particular intervention program was effective in improving competency in select emotion categories for all three participants. Discussions of individual participant outcomes are included, as well as suggestions for further research.

Mémoire de maîtrise présenté en vue de l'obtention de la maîtrise en psychologie (M. Sc) / Introduction. Il est bien établi que les survivants tumeurs cérébrales pédiatriques (STCP) éprouvent des difficultés sociales, et la reconnaissance d’émotions faciales a été étudiée comme un mécanisme sous-jacent. Cependant, l'influence possible de la pandémie sur les capacités de reconnaissance des affects chez les STCP reste inexplorée. La présente étude visait à comparer la reconnaissance des émotions faciales (avec accès au visage complet versus seulement la région des yeux) entre les STCP et des jeunes à développement typique ainsi qu’à examiner son association avec l'adaptation sociale. Méthode. Des STCP (n=23) au moins un an après le traitement et des contrôles (n=24) entre 8 et 16 ans ont complété le sous-test de reconnaissance des affects du NEPSY-II (visage complet) et la version enfant du Reading the Mind in the Eyes Test (RMET, seulement le haut du visage). Résultats. Les groupes ne différaient pas sur leurs habiletés de reconnaissance d’émotions et ceux-ci n’étaient pas associés à leur adaptation sociale. Comparé aux normes pré-pandémie, notre échantillon avait plus de difficultés dans leur capacité de reconnaissance d’émotions avec visage complet ainsi qu’une meilleure performance avec seulement le haut du visage disponible (p < .05). Les participants ont aussi obtenu de meilleurs résultats au RMET qu’au NEPSY-II (p< .05). Conclusion. En somme, la pandémie semble avoir joué un rôle sur les capacités de reconnaissance des émotions faciales, tant chez les STCP que chez les contrôles, soulignant la nécessité d'études futures sur les effets à long terme de la pandémie sur les compétences sociales des jeunes. / Introduction. It is well-established that pediatric brain tumour survivors (PBTS) experience social difficulties, and facial emotion recognition has been studied as an underlying mechanism. However, the possible influence of the pandemic on affect recognition abilities in PBTS remains unexplored. The present study aimed to compare facial affect recognition (with full versus partial facial features) between PBTS and healthy controls (HC) and to examine its association with social adjustment. Method. PBTS (N=23, ages 8-16) at least one-year post-treatment and HC (N=24, ages 8-16) completed the NEPSY-II Affect Recognition subtest (full face) and the child version of the Reading the Mind in the Eyes Test (RMET, upper face only). Results. The groups did not differ in their ability to recognize emotions, and these were not associated with social adjustment. Compared with pre-pandemic norms, our sample had a lower performance in their emotion recognition ability with full face and a better performance with only upper face (p < .05). Participants also performed better on the RMET than on the NEPSY-II (p< .05). Conclusion. In sum, the pandemic appears to have played a role in facial emotion recognition abilities in both PBTS and controls, highlighting the need for future studies on the pandemic long-term effects on young people's social skills.

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<p><strong>Background:</strong> Developmental neuroscience research suggests that relative differences in emerging social skills between very young children with ASD may influence the trajectories of multiple important developmental domains, such as language ability. Such “cascade” associations between developmental trajectories may contribute in important ways to the substantial heterogeneity in symptoms and functioning seen in children with ASD. However, longitudinal research has yet to test such “cascade” models of change in children diagnosed with ASD.</p> <p><strong>Objectives:</strong> In this dissertation I aimed to model cascade patterns of association between social competence and language ability pathways in the year after diagnosis of ASD in preschool-aged children. Data for 365 participants aged 2-4 years old who had been recently diagnosed with ASD and followed prospectively were obtained from the “Pathways To Better Outcomes in ASD Study”.</p> <p><strong>Methods:</strong> Study 1 aimed to determine whether social competence and structural language ability could be measured as distinct constructs that were invariant over time and between clinically relevant groups of young children with ASD. Study 2 modeled longitudinal reciprocal associations between these domains. Study 3 addressed the issue of variability and change within this sample, and tested whether baseline levels and rate of change in one domain were associated with subsequent growth in the other.</p> <p><strong>Results:</strong> Social competence and language ability constructs were measurably distinct and invariant in a young sample comprising verbal and non-verbal children with ASD. Only small reciprocal cascade effects were evident between social and language pathways. Levels of social competence at time of diagnosis were significantly associated with subsequent language growth.</p> <p><strong>Conclusions:</strong> In preschoolers with ASD, advantages in social competence as measured at time of diagnosis appear to “spill over” in a feed-forward cascade model to influence progress in language ability. Social competence and language ability then appear to develop along more specialized, less interrelated pathways.</p> / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Dès les premières années de vie, l’enfant doit être en mesure de comprendre le monde social complexe qui l’entoure afin de s’y intégrer adéquatement. Au quotidien, l’aisance avec laquelle il parvient à naviguer cet environnement et à s’engager efficacement dans ses interactions avec autrui dépend de sa compétence sociale. Une bonne compétence sociale repose, entre autres, sur un ensemble d’habiletés sophistiquées nommé « cognition sociale », qui regroupe diverses fonctions permettant de traiter, comprendre et évaluer les situations sociales ainsi que d’y répondre. Le traitement des normes sociales et le raisonnement sociomoral (RSM) font partie des fonctions sociocognitives les plus complexes et sont reconnus comme étant essentiels au déploiement de comportements sociaux appropriés. Ces deux fonctions distinctes, mais complémentaires, permettent à l’enfant d’analyser les situations de la vie quotidienne sur la base de normes sociales et de critères moraux afin d’offrir une réponse comportementale appropriée à chaque interaction sociale. Selon plusieurs modèles théoriques, bien que l’émergence de ces deux fonctions sociocognitives s’observe dès les premières années de vie, la complexification et le raffinement de ces dernières se poursuivent tout au long de la période développementale. Cette évolution progressive serait soutenue, en partie, par la maturation cérébrale, le développement cognitif et affectif, ainsi que la quantité et de la qualité des expériences sociales. À ce jour, bien que la littérature regorge d’études s’intéressant à la compétence sociale et, plus spécifiquement, au traitement des normes sociales et au RSM, plusieurs questions subsistent concernant les éléments permettant leur recrutement optimal au cours de l’enfance. La difficulté à établir un portrait exhaustif et approfondi des différents facteurs contribuant à ces deux fonctions sociocognitives découle, en partie, de la diversité des approches théoriques, méthodologiques et statistiques utilisées, ainsi que du peu de méthodes objectives permettant d’évaluer ces processus chez les enfants. Ainsi, en s’ancrant dans des cadres théoriques et expérimentaux appartenant aux neurosciences sociales et computationnelles ainsi qu’à la neuropsychologique développementale, cette thèse vise globalement à mieux comprendre les éléments favorisant la compétence sociale durant l’enfance. En s’intéressant plus spécifiquement au traitement des normes sociales et au RSM, les articles de la présente thèse ont pour objectif d’identifier les facteurs contribuant à ces deux habiletés et préciser leur rôle chez les enfants. Le premier article de cette thèse s’appuie sur une méthode novatrice de modélisation comportementale afin d’explorer la capacité d’adaptation aux normes sociales chez des enfants âgés entre 7 et 11 ans et identifier le mécanisme cognitif qui sous-tend cette dernière. Pour ce faire, une tâche de prise de décisions en lien avec la norme d’équité permettant de manipuler les informations sociales auxquelles les enfants sont exposées a été utilisée. Les résultats ont confirmé que les enfants possèdent un mécanisme d’adaptation aux normes sociales qui leur permet de modifier leurs attentes en fonction de l’information implicitement présente dans l’environnement social. L’analyse subséquente des données à travers différents modèles computationnels a révélé que, ces enfants ajustent la norme d’équité de façon dynamique selon l’apport combiné de l’erreur de prédiction (c.-à-d., l’écart entre ce qui est attendu et ce qui se produit réellement) et d’un paramètre individuel d’apprentissage. Le deuxième article de cette thèse visait à identifier les facteurs contributifs précoces du RSM chez les enfants d’âge scolaire. Pour répondre à certaines limites identifiées dans les études précédentes, une approche longitudinale et compréhensive a été privilégiée afin de déterminer comment différents facteurs internes (c.-à-d., inhérent à l’enfant: âge, sexe, tendances comportementales), externes (c.-à-d., provenant de l’environnement : éducation et stress parental, interactions parent-enfant) et cognitifs (c.-à-d., processus mentaux : fonctions exécutives et sociocognitives) présents entre l’âge de 3 à 5 ans contribuaient à la maturité du RSM quatre ans plus tard. Les résultats d’une analyse de régression hiérarchique en quatre étapes ont révélé que les fonctions exécutives et les problèmes de comportement internalisés étaient des prédicteurs indépendants du SMR à l’âge scolaire. Ensemble, les travaux de cette thèse s’ajoutent à une vaste littérature visant à mieux comprendre les éléments qui permettent aux enfants d’être compétents lors de leurs interactions sociales. En explorant plus spécifiquement le traitement des normes sociales et le RSM, les études ont permis d’apporter certaines précisions et nuances concernant les différents facteurs concomitants et prédictifs contribuant au déploiement d’une bonne compétence sociale durant l’enfance. / From the very first years of life, children must understand the complex social world around them in order to adequately participate in it. In everyday life, the ease with which they navigate this environment and effectively engage in interactions with others depends on their social competence. Good social competence relies, among other things, on a set of sophisticated cognitive skills known as "social cognition", which encompasses several abilities that allow the individual to process, understand, evaluate, and respond to social situations. Processing of social norms and sociomoral reasoning (SMR) are among the most complex sociocognitive functions and are recognized as essential to the implementation of appropriate social behaviors. These two distinct but complementary functions allow children to analyze various situations based on social norms and moral criteria, in order to provide appropriate behavioral responses to social interactions. According to several theoretical models, although the emergence of these two sociocognitive functions can be observed from the early years of life, their refinement and complexification continue throughout the developmental period. This progressive evolution is partly supported by brain maturation, cognitive and affective development, as well as the quantity and quality of social experiences. To date, although there is a wealth of studies on social competence and, more specifically, on social norms processing and SMR, several questions remain regarding the underlying factors that enable their optimal recruitment during childhood. One of the biggest issues in establishing a comprehensive and in-depth portrait of the factors contributing to these two sociocognitive functions stems, in part, from the diversity of theoretical, methodological, and statistical approaches used, as well as the limited number of objective methods available for assessing these processes in children. By drawing on theoretical and experimental frameworks belonging to social and computational neurosciences as well as developmental neuropsychology, this thesis globally aims to better understand what promotes social competence during childhood. The articles in this thesis specifically aim to identify the factors that contribute to the adequate recruitment of these two abilities and to clarify their role in school-aged children by focusing on social norms processing and SMR. The first article of this thesis relies on an innovative behavioral modeling method to explore social norms adaptation in children aged 7 to 11 and to identify the cognitive mechanism underlying this process. To achieve this, a fairness-based decision-making task that manipulated the social information to which children were exposed was used. The results confirmed that children rely on an adaptation mechanism to social norms that allows them to adjust their expectations based on the implicit information present in the social environment. Subsequent analyses of the data through different computational models revealed that, children adjust their equity norm dynamically according to the combined contribution of a prediction error (i.e., the discrepancy between what is expected and what actually occurs) and an individual learning rate parameter. The second article of this thesis aimed to identify what factord contribute to SMR in school- aged children. To address some of the limitations identified in previous studies, a longitudinal and comprehensive approach was adopted to determine how different internal factors (i.e., inherent to the child: age, sex, behavioral tendencies), external factors (i.e., from the environment: parental education and stress, parent-child interactions), and cognitive factors (i.e., mental processes: executive and sociocognitive functions) between the ages of 3 and 5 years contribute to SMR maturity four years later. A four-step hierarchical regression analysis revealed that executive functions and internalized behavior problems were independent predictors of SMR. Taken together, the work stemming from this thesis adds to an extensive literature focused on understanding the factors that enable children to be competent in their social interactions. By specifically exploring the processing of social norms and SMR, the two studies provide a more nuanced portrait of the various concomitant and predictive factors that contribute to good social competence in children.

The purpose of this study was to explore the impact of child-centered play therapy (CCPT) on the social competence, empathy, and self-regulation of children diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). The constructs of social competence, empathy, and self-regulation were measured using the Social-Emotional Assets Rating Scale (SEARS). This study utilized a single-case design; the researcher collected data throughout the duration of the study, including baseline, treatment, and follow-up phases. The sample included 5 children ranging from ages 6 to 8 years old: 3 Caucasian males, 1 African-American female, and 1 Latin-American female. Mothers of the participants completed the parent form of the SEARS once per week throughout all phases of the study. During the treatment phase of the study, the children participated in CCPT approximately 2 times per week for 30 minutes each time. Visual analysis of the data indicated play therapy was beneficial for three participants, as they demonstrated improvements in social competence, empathy, and self-regulation. Two participants responded to the intervention with mixed results. Discussion includes implications for clinical practice and future research as well as limitations of the study.