Abstract

Children with language impairment (LI) often demonstrate difficulties in social communication. Although a number of general social communication interventions have been suggested, there is relatively little work done to examine the efficacy of these interventions for school-age children with LI, and none reported to target general emotional competence. The purpose of this study was to examine the effects on teacher perception of an intervention designed to improve emotion understanding. The intervention was centered on the presentation and use of children's stories to introduce and practice aspects of emotion understanding. The withdrawn and sociable subscales of the Teacher Behavior Rating Scale (TBRS) were selected as variables on which to measure teacher perception. Following treatment five of the six participants scored higher ratings of prosocial behavior, with two demonstrating overall reductions in withdrawn behavior and increases in sociable behavior. For one of these participants, the reported progress was notable. The most positive indicator of change following treatment was the reduction in solitary-active withdrawal behavior reported for three of the participants. A reduction in this type of behavior would most likely have an important impact on the quality of social interactions experienced by these individuals.

Degree

MS

College and Department

David O. McKay School of Education; Communication Disorders

Rights

http://lib.byu.edu/about/copyright/

Date Submitted

2011-07-12

Document Type

Thesis

Handle

http://hdl.lib.byu.edu/1877/etd4645

Keywords

language impairment, social communication, emotion understanding, withdrawal, sociability, intervention, school-age children

Language

English

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