Challenges in Measuring Social Communication Changes in Verbally Fluent Autistic Individuals: Development of the Brief Observation of Social Communication Change: Fluent 1 and Fluent 2 (BOSCC-F1/F2).

Byrne et al. (2025) built two short checklists for verbally fluent autistic clients. They call them BOSCC-F1 and BOSCC-F2.

The team watched short videos and scored social moves like eye contact, questions, and topic shifts. They wanted to see if the scores stayed the same when different people rated the same clip.

The checklists were reliable. Three clear factors showed up: social initiations, responses, and repetitive speech.

Yet, across the study window, total scores barely budged. The tool held steady, but real-life social growth was too small to spot.

Pijl et al. (2018) tested the toddler version of the BOSCC and saw positive change over time. The new fluent form did not copy that result. The gap looks like a contradiction, but it is not: toddlers in early intervention often make fast jumps, while verbally fluent clients may show slower, subtler shifts that a short study can miss.

Dudley et al. (2019) showed you can score the toddler BOSCC during a 10-minute home snack with the same reliability as clinic play. Byrne et al. (2025) kept the same rating style but swapped the setting and age group, extending the tool upward on the spectrum.

Faja et al. (2023) compared eight social-communication scales and found most can separate autistic from typical groups. BOSCC-F1/F2 now joins that menu, but only for clients who speak in full sentences.

If you run social-skills groups for verbally fluent clients, keep using the BOSCC-F for baseline and fidelity checks, but pair it with a second outcome like caregiver logs or self-ratings. Do not expect big score jumps in a few weeks; plan longer tracking windows or add micro-goals that the tool can capture.