Nonstandardized Tasks
- Hypothetical
- Narrative
- Analog
- Direct   Observation

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Analog Tasks - Design Protocol

Analog tasks mimic social dilemmas that children are likely to encounter in their everyday interactions. Because they simulate daily situations, these tasks approach "real time" interactions where children use language to resolve important social problems. The protocol that follows summarizes essential components for designing and implementing analog tasks for clinical use; the emphasis here is on tasks that sample peer negotiation.

1. Set up the participants for the analog task. Select two children who are roughly the same age as the "child-of-concern." Determine that the three children are not friends. While they may be acquainted with each other, they should not share a friendship or be in the same class at school.
   
   
2. Select one or more activities that simulate a social situation and will require the children to demonstrate a specific social communication behavior. For example, analog tasks can be useful for creating social situations that sample peer negotiation, telling the truth, explaining behaviors. We have used analog tasks that simulate cooperative social situations among peers, which require children to negotiate or resolve a conflict.
   
   In our video segment example on this Web site, we required the three children to interact cooperatively in selecting a single toy from a toy catalog and deciding on a single item for a group snack. We have also used a cooperative social situation, such as designing a T-shirt. Most importantly, consider what behaviors you wish the children to demonstrate, and design your analog task to simulate a social situation that samples these behaviors.
   
   Make sure you construct the task in such a way as to sample sufficient behaviors. In cooperative social situations that are designed to sample negotiation, the children must be "forced" to negotiate. This means they must have different opinions. For example, in designing a T-shirt activity, the children can be told they must only use three colors, but are provided with 4 differently colored magic markers. They are also told that they must use at least two different shapes and two different types of materials (and they are provided with four). Finally, they are put under a time limit, placing additional pressure on them. Such variables increase the likelihood of negotiating, and of course, conflict.
   
   
3. Audio (or video) record the children's interaction as they interact in the "counterfeit" social situation.
   
   
4. Score the analog task for important linguistic and communicative behaviors. You will score the "child at risk" and the peers, looking for a difference in performance.
   
   Quantitative measures for language might include:
   
   1. Proportion of different words (i.e., # different words/total number of words).
   2. Proportion of complex sentences (i.e., # of utterances with a complex structure/total number of utterances).
   
   Quantitative measures for communication might include (following Grice, 1975; Lakoff, 1973):
   
   1. Proportion of clear communicative attempts (i.e., # of clear communicative attempts/total number of communicative attempts).
   2. Proportion of polite communicative attempts (i.e., # of polite communicative attempts/total number of communicative attempts).

You might wish to see Brinton et al, (1998) and Fujiki et al, (1997) for specific ideas about scoring negotiation behaviors.

In addition to quantitative measures, you may also wish to qualitatively "score" performance, by transcribing actions you observe, and looking for patterns or themes in these actions.

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