There are currently five active Rush NeuroBehavioral Center research projects. Three are focused on the nature and assessment of social-emotional learning skills and two are focused on the effects of social development interventions.

Social-Emotional Learning Assessment Projects

1. Development of SEL Assessment Strategies for Pre-School Children
This project, funded by the McCormick Foundation, is focused on the development of assessment strategies for pre-school children. This area of inquiry is important because identifying and addressing problems intervening early in a child’s development often yields the greatest improvement. There are, however, few instruments for assessing the skills and deficits of children younger than five, when interventions could be extremely effective. This study is designed to help address that limitation.

2. Development of SEL Assessment Strategies for School-Aged Children: School Study
One study, funded by the Buntrock Family Foundation, involves general education students in grades K through 8. This study is focused on evaluating the reliability and validity of social-emotional learning assessments. A second goal of the project is to better understand normal age-related changes in children’s social-emotional learning skill. A final important goal of this project is to better understand normal variation in social-emotional learning skill among typically-developing children.

3. Development of SEL Assessment Strategies for School-Aged Children: Clinic Study
Children with a wide variety of neurobehavioral disorders frequently have social difficulties. A second study funded by the Buntrock Family Foundation examines SEL assessments among children with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, autism-spectrum disorders, and reading disorders. One goal of this project is to understand whether SEL assessments have the same reliability and validity in clinic-referred children. A second goal of the project is to understand the unique patterns of social-emotional strengths and weaknesses in different diagnostic groups.

Social Emotional Learning Intervention

Another study seeks to answer the question, When children have social challenges, what can be done to help them succeed? With funding from the Buntrock Family Foundation and the William and Katherine Devers Foundation, we have begun to study the effects of social development group interventions on children with social challenges.

Our goal in our current intervention research projects is to develop and evaluate a social development group therapy model that targets multiple skills that can interfere with social functioning among children with a range of clinical diagnoses. Children with social challenges can have difficulty regulating their behavior, reading social cues, understanding and using language to achieve social goals, and engaging in effective social problem-solving. As a result, we have constructed our social development group therapy model to address the following skill areas in sequence:

1.    Self-regulation (staying calm and attentive)
2.    Nonverbal communication (nderstanding and using nonverbal cues)
3.    Pragmatic language (understanding and using social language)
4.    Social problem-solving
5.    Cooperative play skills

Specific Projects

1. Clinic-Based Social Development Groups
We have completed a brief pilot social development groups and a year-long social development group, both for 7th grade boys, at RNBC.  We have collected extensive data before, during, and after the group to understand how children responded to the treatment.

2. School-Based Social Development Groups
We recently completed a year-long social development group with third-graders whose teachers felt that they were struggling socially. We collected extensive data to assess the impact of the group on children’s social functioning.