The construction and evaluation of three measures of affectionate behaviour for children with Asperger's syndrome.
New affection checklists give BCBAs a quick, multi-rater way to spot and track affection gaps in school-age kids with Asperger’s.
01Research in Context
What this study did
Sofronoff et al. (2014) built three short questionnaires that track how children with Asperger’s show and feel affection.
Parents, teachers, and the children themselves each get their own form. The team checked that the questions hang together, give steady scores, and line up with other known measures.
What they found
All three forms showed clear question groupings and high internal consistency. Children with Asperger’s scored much lower on affection than typical peers, giving clinicians hard numbers for a soft skill.
How this fits with other research
Kahng et al. (1999) gave us the first quick screen for Asperger’s; Kate’s 2014 tools zoom in on the affection piece that screen only hinted at.
Kalyva (2010) also found low rater agreement when kids with AS rated their own social skills. Kate saw the same pattern: self-ratings again missed the problem, so you still need parent and teacher eyes.
Attwood et al. (1988) showed that short affection games can boost peer play. Kate now supplies the ruler you need to pick which kids should join those games and to track if affection really grows.
Why it matters
You now have free, ready-to-copy forms that turn “trouble with affection” into numbers you can graph. Use them at intake, in annual reviews, or to show insurance why a social-affection goal makes sense.
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Join Free →Print the parent form, give it at pickup, and use the total score to pick one affection skill to target first.
02At a glance
03Original abstract
Children with Asperger's syndrome are often reported by their parents as having difficulties communicating affection. This study aimed to develop a valid measure of affectionate behaviour that could be used to investigate and quantify these anecdotal reports and then be used in further intervention research. Using parent and expert focus groups, three measures (Affection for Others Questionnaire, Affection for You Questionnaire and General Affection Questionnaire) were developed with reference to the existing affection literature. The measures were completed by 131 parents of children with a clinician-confirmed diagnosis of Asperger's syndrome. Psychometric assessment of the measures revealed clear factor structures with high internal consistencies and significant concurrent validities. The findings suggest many children with Asperger's syndrome have difficulties with affectionate behaviour that significantly impact their daily functioning and relationships with others, signalling future research needs to develop interventions in this area. Limitations of the research are also discussed.
Autism : the international journal of research and practice, 2014 · doi:10.1177/1362361313496336