Nonstandardized Tasks
- Hypothetical
- Narrative
- Analog
- Direct   Observation

If you have not previously answered our Nonstandard-ized Task Use questionnaire, please click here.

Hypothetical tasks are placed at the contrived end of the "real time" continuum. They are structured tasks that provide an efficient means of examining what children may say or do in social situations.

These tasks have been used to explore social problem-solving and conflict resolution. They include scripted interactions between an examiner and a child. The examiner presents a plausible social dilemma and then asks the child how the problem could be resolved. The examiner may elicit a response by providing a list of alternatives and asking the child to select the best way to solve the problem. Alternatively, the child may produce a self-generated, spontaneous response.

The tasks are typically administered in a quiet room and provide ample time for a child to formulate and produce a response. By definition, hypothetical tasks are highly structured, include few individuals, have few distractions, don't require an immediate/on the spot response. They also provide little in the way of redundancy of cues as well. They are efficient to administer and score, and they allow comparisons to be made with peers.

For references that describe these tasks, see:

• Renshaw & Asher (1983)
• Stevens and Bliss (1995)
• Chung & Asher (1996)
• Rose & Asher (1999)
• Timler (2000)

Advantages:

• Tasks are efficient to administer.
• Tasks create discrete opportunities to sample specific behaviors

Limitations:

• Tasks are contrived. The situation is manufactured, the setting artificial (outside the classroom), only the clinician is present, and the children are knowingly observed. As such, they do not reflect how a child would perform under real time social conditions.

Design Protocol:

• To assist you in developing your own Hypothetical Tasks, we have provided you with a design protocol. This protocol contains guidelines and examples for creating hypothetical tasks for sampling social communication behaviors, and for scoring children's responses. Hopefully, this protocol will allow you to develop and implement hypothetical tasks to assist in the assessment of children for whom you suspect social communication problems.

Video Segment

Hypothetical Tasks Video (14MB, Quick Time Movie)

This video segment illustrates a child (9;6, diagnosed with fetal alcohol exposure) participating in a hypothetical task. The goal of the hypothetical task is to create a social situation scenario that requires children to consider a social problem and how they might respond if they were faced with it. The example on the video presents a peer conflict and explores a child's strategies for resolving it. First, the child is asked to respond to an open-ended question. Second, the child is provided with choices of how she might respond. These choices focus on strategies for resolving the conflict and the expected goal that would go along with the selected strategy. The video segment presents the peer conflict scenario with the open-ended question, followed by the forced choice.

A free download of QuickTime Player is available at http://www.apple.com/quicktime/download/

Hypothetical | Narrative | Analog | Direct Observation
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University of Washington, Dept. of Speech & Hearing Sciences, Tele-Collaboration Project. © 1999-2001, UW-SPHSC, including all photographs and images unless otherwise noted. Comments: tcollab@u.washington.edu