The Double Interview Task: Assessing the Social Communication of Children with Asperger Syndrome

Department of Speech-Language-Hearing: Science and Disorders, May 2004

This was a study designed to determine if there was a difference in performance on a social communication assessment procedure, the Double Interview Task, (Winner, 2002) in children with Asperger Syndrome and children of the same age who were developing typically. There were 20 participants in this study, 10 with Asperger Syndrome and 10 developing typically. A difference in performance between groups was found. Children with Asperger Syndrome used more utterances but asked fewer questions than participants developing typically. Overall, children with Asperger Syndrome made more errors in each of the error categories including: having difficulty formulating questions, asking shallow questions, diverting the topic back to themselves or their experiences, repeating a question that the researcher asked them, making revisions including false-starts and self-interruptions, and needing to be redirected back to the task of asking questions. Children with Asperger Syndrome were less effective at the Double Interview Task. This overall difficulty can be attributed to a deficit in social communication, said to be the core deficit in individuals with Asperger Syndrome. A difference was shown in perspective taking ability of children with Asperger Syndrome as compared to children developing typically. The Double Interview Task evaluates the students' ability to shift perspective, to organize thoughts into language that moves in a purposeful direction toward someone else's area of interest, and to formulate questions and follow up with more specific questions to explore another persons' interests (Winner, 2002). The Double Interview Task can be used to establish a baseline for these skills, to monitor progress during intervention, and as a post intervention measure.