Research shows that children with language impairment (LI) often have deficits in social communication. The purpose of this study was to examine the effectiveness of a social communication intervention targeting emotion understanding on teacher perceptions of withdrawal in six elementary-aged boys with LI. The intervention incorporated four elements into treatment sessions: a) Story sharing of children's literature that was rich in emotional content and prosocial behaviors; b) Story enactment of the same children's literature; c) identification and discussion of pictures of facial expressions; and d) journaling to help internalize and reflect on emotions and social behaviors targeted. Two withdrawal subscales of the Teacher Behavior Rating Scale (TBRS), reticence and solitary-passive behavior, were used as variables with which to measure teacher perception. Pre and postintervention measures of teacher ratings were taken and compared for each participant. Results indicated that four of the six participants improved in ratings of withdrawn behaviors following treatment. Two of the boys improved 2 SD for ratings of reticence. Two additional participants did not show improvement, but remained stable in their pre and posttreatment scores for both reticence and solitary-passive withdrawal. These results indicate a generally favorable outcome of the social communication intervention with regard to social withdrawal in children with LI.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:BGMYU2/oai:scholarsarchive.byu.edu:etd-7904 |
| Date | 01 July 2017 |
| Creators | Peterson, Cammy G. |
| Publisher | BYU ScholarsArchive |
| Source Sets | Brigham Young University |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Source | All Theses and Dissertations |
| Rights | http://lib.byu.edu/about/copyright/ |
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