A Novel Employment Specific Social Communication Assessment Tool for Individuals with Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD)

Kessler Foundation, Inc., West Orange NJ

Investigators

Abstract

Project summary: It has been documented in several studies that unemployment rates in Transition Age Youth on the Autism Spectrum (TAY-AS) are significantly higher than individuals with other disabilities, with approximately two thirds of autistic individuals unemployed. The autism community has identified social communication as a significant challenge in maintaining employment, as they negatively impact the interactions of TAY-AS with other employees. Politeness, which is one of the key aspects of social communication, is viewed as the demonstration of appropriateness in social interactions. Politeness markers (PMs) are the utterances used to express politeness. Although PMs use has been evaluated in other populations that display social communication deficits, such as persons with brain injury and Parkinson’s disease, they have not been evaluated in the autistic population. The current study will address this gap in literature by evaluating the use of PMs using the Voicemail Elicitation task (VET). VET provides variable workplace contexts in a role- play format to stimulate language samples in which PMs are assessed. The aims of this proposed project are a) Evaluate the use of VET as a screening tool to detect deficits in PMs use in TAY-AS and compare this with neurotypical controls (NTCs) performance, b) Evaluate whether current VET scoring schemas are adequate or whether they need to be updated and expanded from their original form to detect autism- specific or autism-centric PMs, c) Initial evaluation of the psychometric properties of VET (reliability and validity).This proposed project will enroll 30 TAY-AS and 30 NTCs with age range between 16-24 years. We will compare the performance of the two groups in PMs and this will enable us to define the specific deficits in PMs use in individuals with autism which will aid in designing interventions that target these deficits.