Abstract
Children with autism show deficits in social referencing, joint attention, orienting to their names, and social smiling as early as the first year of life. The present study describes the development of the Social Orienting Continuum and Response Scale (SOC-RS), a quantitative scale assessing each of these behaviors during the course of video-recorded Autism Diagnostic Observation Schedule (ADOS) sessions. The SOC-RS was shown to be reliable and valid, and when applied to a longitudinal sample of children studied at 2 and 4 years of age, was shown to be sensitive to decreased levels of social referencing, joint attention, orienting to name, and social smiling in autism. The implications of these findings and potential applications of the SOC-RS are discussed.
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Research supported by NIH grants MH61696 (J Piven), HD03110 (J Piven). We would like to acknowledge Debra Childress for her assistance in critique of this manuscript.
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Appendix A
Appendix A
Social Orienting Continuum and Response Scale Variable Definitions
Social referencing: Instances in which the child is observed looking directly at another person’s face. It must be clear that the child is looking at the person’s face and not another part of the body and not at a proximal object. Also, the child must fixate on the person’s face, rather than glancing past him/her.
Joint Attention Responding: Events in which the examiner, parent, or other individual attempt to direct the child’s attention to an object via establishing attention and shifting his or her gaze should be scored as Joint Attention Responding opportunity. If the child redirects his/her attention in the direction indicated by the person who initiated the bid, then they should be scored as having responded to joint attention.
Joint Attention Initiating: Events in which the child initiates a joint attention should be coded separately from Joint Attention Responding. In order for this behavior to be scored, the child must seek to get another individual to attend to an object or person of interest either by a shift in eye gaze or a distal point. The child must further reference the individual with whom they are interacting. Only responses that are “protodeclarative” in nature should be scored. “Protodeclarative” responses include those in which the primary goal of the interaction is to share attention or enjoyment or find out information about an object (e.g., pointing and asking, “What’s that?”). In contrast, “protoimperative” episodes are those in which the child includes another individual solely as a means to obtain an object.
Orienting to name: Events in which the child’s name is stated and at least a 1 second pause occurs in which the child’s response is observed by the person who called his/her name.
Social smiling: Any event in which the child shows a clear and appropriate smile that involves attention to the face of a social partner should be scored. Pretend emotions, as in the course of playing, also may be scored if clearly indicated, and appropriate to the context (i.e., not stereotypic or inconsistent with the context).
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Mosconi, M.W., Steven Reznick, J., Mesibov, G. et al. The Social Orienting Continuum and Response Scale (SOC-RS): A Dimensional Measure for Preschool-aged Children. J Autism Dev Disord 39, 242–250 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10803-008-0620-4
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10803-008-0620-4