Assessing interactional competencies: The early social-communication scales

Abstract

Interactional competencies that develop in the first two years of life provide a foundation for all further social and communicative developments. Their normal acquisition, especially in the handicapped, can not be taken for granted. If delays in social‐communicative development can be identified early in life and changes made in how the social environment interacts with the child, intervention may effectively facilitate social development. However, to accomplish this, both a model for describing and an instrument for assessing interactional competencies are needed. A recently developed set of scales, organized according to a cognitive‐developmental framework and drawing upon recent research literature, is described in terms of its organization and content. Results that support the cognitive model underlying the set of scales are reported. The paper concludes with a consideration of potential criticisms that may apply to such a theoretically based instrument.

The Development of Anticipatory Smiling

“…At each of the three visits, participants were administered the abridged version of the Early Social-Communication Scales (ESCS; Mundy et al, 2003;Seibert, Hogan, & Mundy, 1982), a measure of nonverbal communication behaviors. The ESCS is a semistructured child-experimenter assessment that elicits initiating joint attention and related behaviors.…”

Randomized controlled trial of parental responsiveness intervention for toddlers at high risk for autism

“…Average reliability between two independent coders blind to child condition was .94 for children's play acts and .83 for parental responses. (Seibert, Hogan, & Mundy, 1982) is a semi-structured experimenter-child procedure used to assess nonverbal communication behaviors, which typically emerge between 8 and 30 months. The ESCS is videotaped and coded for the frequency of initiations of joint attention (coordinated looks between person and objects, pointing to share, showing toys, joint attention language) and responses (to examiner's points and gaze).…”

Individual Differences and the Development of Joint Attention in Infancy

“…Different behavioral manifestations of joint attention begin to emerge in the first 6 months of life (D'Entremont, Hains, & Muir, 1997;Farroni, Massaccesi, & Francesca, 2002;Morales, Mundy, & Rojas, 1998) and continue to develop at least through 3 years of age (Adamson, Bakeman, & Dekner, 2004;Carpenter, Nagell, & Tomasello, 1998). These different infant joint attention behaviors may be used for declarative and instrumental-imperative functions (Bates, Benigni, Bretherton, Camaioni, & Volterra, 1979), as well as to initiate or respond to bids in interactions with social partners (Seibert, Hogan, & Mundy, 1982).…”

“…Different behavioral manifestations of joint attention begin to emerge in the first 6 months of life (D'Entremont, Hains, & Muir, 1997;Farroni, Massaccesi, & Francesca, 2002;Morales, Mundy, & Rojas, 1998) and continue to develop at least through 3 years of age (Adamson, Bakeman, & Dekner, 2004;Carpenter, Nagell, & Tomasello, 1998). These different infant joint attention behaviors may be used for declarative and instrumental-imperative functions (Bates, Benigni, Bretherton, Camaioni, & Volterra, 1979), as well as to initiate or respond to bids in interactions with social partners (Seibert, Hogan, & Mundy, 1982).Various labels have been used to refer to these behavioral dimensions of infant joint attention (Carpenter et al, 1998). Here we adopt the nomenclature initially suggested by Seibert et al (1982) that is currently widely used in the research literature as well as in multidimensional assessments of early social communication development (e.g., Fidler, Philofsky, Hepburn, & Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Peter Mundy, University of Miami, 5665 Ponce De Leon Blvd., Coral Gables, FL 33146.…”

“…These different infant joint attention behaviors may be used for declarative and instrumental-imperative functions (Bates, Benigni, Bretherton, Camaioni, & Volterra, 1979), as well as to initiate or respond to bids in interactions with social partners (Seibert, Hogan, & Mundy, 1982).…”