Assessment Symposium Series: Assessing Social Cognition

by Erin McKenney, Stern Center Evaluation Team

The Cynthia K. Hoehl Institute for Excellence at the Stern Center, along with support from the Vermont Agency of Education, is offering a three-part Assessment Symposium Series for school psychologists and other education professionals. The first workshop, Assessing Social Cognition, was held at the end of January 2015.

Presented by Julie Erdelyi, this workshop was designed to help support educators, school psychologists, speech-language pathologists, guidance counselors and anyone working with children who may be struggling with social cognition skills.

Social cognition refers to how people process social information, especially its application to situations requiring a level of social interaction. When considering social deficits what often comes to mind is Autism Spectrum Disorder. However, these deficits can apply to children with wide ranges of issues, such as attention-deficit disorder, complex trauma, attachment disorders, speech and language disorders, and learning disabilities. It is important for providers to be able to evaluate a child’s level of social cognition in order to implement effective interventions.

Within social cognition assessment, multiple areas are examined: language capability, vicarious learning capability, forethought capability and self-reflective capability. These capacities are necessary for a person to communicate effectively, learn from watching others, being able to think ahead and an ability to reflect on one’s own behaviors. One or more of these areas may be impaired causing a social cognitive deficit. 

There are various assessments that can be used to check social cognition, including Theory of Mind Inventory, Social Language Development Test, Social Responsiveness Scale, Test of Problem Solving, Nonverbal Social Communication Rating Scale, Conversation Skills Inventory and other Evidence-Based Informal Measures. Some examples of informal measures include prompted interactions such as dropping a pen (to determine if the child notices when you bend to pick it up) or eye gaze, following a point or a laser pen and problem-solving puzzles.

Of course, a good assessment involves clinical interviews and behavioral observations as well. Having an opportunity to observe children at play can yield a wealth of information regarding their level of social cognition. Determining if children are interacting during play or engaging in parallel play is rich with clues about their level of social cognition – do they share materials or space? Can they “mix ideas?” Play is how children express themselves and can be considered a form of communication. Whether or not they include others in this process can be very telling.

As social beings, humans depend on one another. People who have social cognition deficits are unable to form these connections naturally and lack the capabilities mentioned above, which help facilitate these interactions. Being able to understand a child’s unique social cognitive profile will assist with treatment planning and help the child develop thoughts, feelings and skills that include those around them. As teachers, clinicians and other professionals who work with children, it can be very rewarding to be able to intervene in such a complex area of functioning in order to promote a child’s understanding in this profoundly social world.

The next workshop in the Stern Center’s Assessment Symposium Series is “Evaluating Listening Comprehension and Reading Comprehension for School Psychologists,” presented by Dr. Melissa Farrall on March 27, 2015. Learn more about the workshop or register now.