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
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:bu.edu/oai:open.bu.edu:2144/43119 |
| Date | 27 September 2021 |
| Creators | Munsell, Elizabeth G. S. |
| Contributors | Coster, Wendy J. |
| Source Sets | Boston University |
| Language | en_US |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis/Dissertation |
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