Factores psicológicos

Reviewing frequently-used techniques for the measurement of behaviour and language, techniques for inclusion in the current investigation have been identified. Firstly,

measurement of social and pragmatic aspects of behaviour and language and communication in children is important. Impairment in understanding the intentions of verbal messages of peers may exacerbate interaction difficulties, having implications for peer relationships, classroom management and inclusion. The same is true for social non-verbal behaviours, as impairment in reciprocal interaction skills (such as shared attention behaviours) and socially inappropriate or disruptive behaviour may also exacerbate interaction problems and create peer and classroom difficulties.

In light of the limitations of relying solely on report data, the current study will employ the Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire (Goodman, 1997) and the Children’s Communication Checklist-2 (Bishop, 2003) as background supportive assessments alongside observational techniques, rather than as primary assessments of behaviour and language difficulties in children. These address pragmatic communication and social interaction skills. In addition, the CCC-2 also captures structural language difficulties. The measurement of both pragmatic and structural language difficulties is important as existing research discussed in Chapter 3 indicates both of these to be impaired in children with behavioural, emotional and social difficulties. Furthermore, as also highlighted in Chapter 3, both reports are most commonly used in research exploring behaviour and language associations. Their inclusion in the current project will therefore allow for comparisons to be made to existing research. Both reports are also reported to have high levels of reliability and validity, and are applicable to the age range of children in the current study. Incorporating report data into the current study also has implications for analysis of specific areas of strength and weakness in language and behaviour; the subscales of each of these assessments will be discussed and correlated to investigate behaviour and language associations at the reported characteristic level.

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Secondly, the investigation of communicative interaction must include measurement of behaviours of children in the same social and naturalistic context (avoiding variable contextual influences). Currently, the most suitable measurement technique for assessing communicative interaction of children with others, as well as the interaction between behaviour and language constructs, is observational coding. In the two reviews above, three coding schemes for behaviour and four coding schemes for language that have been

successfully used in previous research were identified. However, behaviour coding was primarily targeting ASD characteristics, problematic behaviours and interactions with an adult (some peer observations in one study). In the language coding schemes, each was primarily a measurement of the language and communication of children that occurs during semi-

structured conversational interaction with an adult. They are also designed for use with clinical samples of children with language or behaviour disorder. Therefore, the current study will develop a novel coding scheme to explore the peer-to-peer verbal and non-verbal

communicative interaction of a non-clinical sample of children who are likely to have co- occurring language and behaviour difficulties during a naturalistic context. The development of this will, however, be informed by considering behaviour and language/communication outcomes of existing schemes discussed here. The coding scheme will be used in conjunction with Noldus Observer in order to apply codes to video-data of children. Development and presentation of this coding scheme will be discussed in forthcoming chapters and Appendices A and B.

In order to measure social interaction between children in the same social and naturalistic context without the influence of variable external influences, there is a need for interaction to be standardised across different children. As mentioned above in relation to tasks used during observations in studies in Literature review 3, none discussed would be suitable for measuring or eliciting communicative interaction behaviours of children with BESD; the engagement of the children, and therefore the behaviours observed, may be influenced by the type of task employed as well as the setting in which the observation takes place. As a result of this, existing interaction tasks that children could complete to allow for standardisation were explored. These explorations are detailed in Appendix C. Tasks were found to be

inappropriate to the current research context. Therefore, a novel communicative interaction task was developed which allowed for the measurement of behaviours specified within the coding scheme: the ‘Story in a Box’ (Charlton, 2014). This task was appropriate to the

educational research context and elicited communicative interaction behaviours from children to a degree where they could be accurately measured. The ‘Story in a Box’ task centred upon

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story-telling and problem solving where peers must work together to solve problems at various stages of the story in order to complete the task. The task was initially tested with children to ensure appropriate behaviours were elicited and could be measured using the novel coding scheme. Details of the ‘Story in a Box’ development and exploratory testing may be found in Chapter 9 (p.123) and Appendix E.

Finally, in light of the advantages of an automated language analysis system (LENA), its reported efficacy, and the fact that LENA is yet to be used with children with behavioural, emotional and social behavioural difficulties as well as children of primary school age, the current project will include LENA as a measurement of count language data (such as number of conversational turns and child vocalisations). This adds an alternative dimension of

language measurement to coded language, which primarily focuses on the nature of language and the context in which it occurs. Furthermore, the mobility of LENA means it is practically suitable for the measurement of language in a naturalistic context such as the current project employs. Therefore, LENA measurement will reflect the use of language in the real world in addition to parent-reported language ability. LENA inclusion will also provide an opportunity to explore its capabilities for language measurement further through its use with older

children with BESD. The current study will be one of the first LENA projects to be carried out within the UK.

Combining multiple methods of measurement rather than relying solely on one technique will provide improved measurement of behaviour and language associations. The current project will combine observational coding techniques (Noldus Observer) and automated language analysis (LENA) alongside report assessment, with the aim of capturing holistic, live ‘as it happens’ and ecologically valid profiles of the children’s abilities and interactions at individual and construct level. Furthermore, these combined techniques will allow for

capturing various individuals’ perspectives rather than relying on one perspective, those of the observer, teachers or parents. Since the existing literature has confirmed a relationship

between behaviour and language and communication difficulties in children, and the present chapter has looked at the measurement of these, the following chapter will address theoretical perspectives relating to behaviour and language in order to attempt to understand why such associations between difficulties exist.

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