"Do I Know What I Need to Do?" A Social Communication Intervention for Children With Complex Clinical Profiles

Abstract

Purpose: Speech-language pathologists frequently address social communication difficulties in children with diverse clinical profiles. The purpose of this study was to investigate the feasibility of a social communication intervention for a school-age child with a complex cognitive and behavioral profile secondary to diagnosis of a fetal alcohol spectrum disorder. Method: A case study is presented to describe the implementation of the intervention targeting mental state verb production and social cognitive skills. The intervention included group role play of social scripts and a checklist to elicit the participant’s statements about others’ perspectives and strategies for completing the social script. Treatment data monitored the participant’s responses to the checklist questions. Probe sessions, consisting of theory of mind false belief tasks, were used to examine mental state verb use. Results: Treatment data demonstrated that the participant stated more strategies in response to checklist questions. The participant did not produce any mental state verbs during baseline probes, but did produce mental state verbs during the treatment phase. Clinical Implications: The results support use of this intervention to change children’s linguistic and social cognitive skills. Suggestions for extending this intervention to include a generalization plan targeting classroom social communication interactions are provided.