title: Who reports it best? A comparison between parent-report, self-report, and the real life social behaviors of adults with Williams syndrome.
abstract: Given the reliance on self-report in studies of adults with intellectual disabilities, this study examined individual vs. parental reports concerning the social approach behaviors of adults with Williams syndrome (WS) across a hypothetical and a live behavioral setting. Individuals with WS (N = 30) were asked whether they would approach strangers in two hypothetical, laboratory tasks (yes/no questionnaire vs. judging facial stimuli of individuals with different emotional expressions). Similarly, their parents also responded to a rating scale of their child's social approach behavior toward strangers displaying various emotions. Then, in a community setting, behavioral coders recorded actual social approaches of individuals with WS toward strangers. Although self-report ratings were consistent across measures, these measures did not correspond to the individuals' actual behaviors during the community observations. Conversely, parental reports did not correspond to their child's self-report measures, but parents did more accurately predict their child's real-life social approach behaviors. Implications are discussed for both research and practice.
authors.affiliation: Department of Counseling, Educational Psychology, and Special Education, Michigan State University, United States. Electronic address: fishermh@msu.edu.
authors.forename: Marisa H
authors.initials: MH
authors.lastname: Fisher
authors.affiliation: Department of Special Education, Vanderbilt University, United States.
authors.forename: Maria P
authors.initials: MP
authors.lastname: Mello
authors.affiliation: Vanderbilt Kennedy Center, United States.
authors.forename: Elisabeth M
authors.initials: EM
authors.lastname: Dykens
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D005149:Facial Expression; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008607:Intellectual Disability / Q000523:psychology; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D010290:Parents; D015203:Reproducibility of Results; D057566:Self Report; D012919:Social Behavior; D012938:Social Perception; D011795:Surveys and Questionnaires; D018980:Williams Syndrome / Q000523:psychology*; D055815:Young Adult
keywords: Behavioral observation; Correspondence; Intellectual disability; Self report; Sociability; Williams syndrome