title: The Social Orienting Continuum and Response Scale (SOC-RS): a dimensional measure for preschool-aged children.
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.
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology and Psychiatry, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Chapel Hill, NC, USA. mmosconi@psych.uic.edu
authors.forename: Matthew W
authors.initials: MW
authors.lastname: Mosconi
authors.forename: J
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Steven Reznick
authors.forename: Gary
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Mesibov
authors.forename: Joseph
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Piven
mesh_terms: D000367:Age Factors; D000704:Analysis of Variance; D001288:Attention; D001321:Autistic Disorder / Q000175:diagnosis* / Q000503:physiopathology / Q000523:psychology*; D002648:Child; D002675:Child, Preschool; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007223:Infant; D007398:Interpersonal Relations; D008137:Longitudinal Studies; D008279:Magnetic Resonance Imaging; D008297:Male; D009275:Names; D009483:Neuropsychological Tests / Q000592:standards*; D015588:Observer Variation; D009949:Orientation; D015203:Reproducibility of Results; D012680:Sensitivity and Specificity; D012904:Smiling / Q000523:psychology; D012919:Social Behavior; D012938:Social Perception; D013997:Time Factors