The following publications and presentations reflect our interest in the nature, assessment, and treatment of social impairments in childhood:
Click on these headings to see complete listings
2010 Scientific Conference Presentations
2009 Peer-Reviewed Articles
2009 Scientific Conference Presentations
2008 Peer-Reviewed Articles
2008 Scientific Conference Presentations
2007 Peer-Reviewed Articles
2007 Scientific Conference Presentations
2010 Scientific Conference Presentations
Russo, N., Berry-Kravis, E., McKown, C., & Lipton, M. (May, 2010). Variants in the Social-Emotional Phenotype of Children with Autism and Children with Fragile X Syndrome. Oral presentation at the International Meeting for Autism Research, Philadelphia, PA.
Russo, N., Berry-Kravis, E., McKown, C., & Lipton, M. (April, 2010). Social Information Processing Deficits in Girls with Fragile X Syndrome. Poster presentation at the 27th Annual Rush University Forum for Research and Clinical Investigation, Chicago, IL.
McKown, C., & Johnson, J. (2010, March). Screening efficiency of a teacher-report measure of social rejection. Poster presentation at the annual convention for the National Association of School Psychologists, Chicago, IL.
McKown, C., Gumbiner, L. & Alderson, D. (2010, March). A reliable, valid test of children’s theory of mind. Poster presentation at the annual convention for the National Association of School Psychologists, Chicago, IL.
Evans-Smith, B., Allen, A.E., & Panian, S. (2010, March). Promoting social competency: The effectiveness of a social group intervention. Oral presentation at the annual convention for the National Association of School Psychologists, Chicago, IL.
Lipton, M., & Nowicki, S. (2009). The social emotional learning framework (SELF): A guide for understanding brain-based social emotional learning impairments. The Journal of Developmental Processes, 4(2), 99–115.
This paper introduces a framework for understanding and assessing, children and adolescents who have normal intellectual capacity, but significant brain-based social-emotional learning (SEL) processing impairments. The complete framework includes comprehension and execution, but the focus of this initial paper is on comprehension. Comprehension is defined as the ability to encode, interpret, and reason about social — emotional information. We consider three domains of SEL processing, awareness, meaning, and reasoning, and describe methods of assessment within each domain. Appropriate description and assessment of brain-based social-emotional learning impairments should aid in a fuller understanding of the development of social difficulties and may help to reveal causes of social failure as well as provide a guide for the design of possible interventions in the future.
McKown, C., Gumbiner, L.M., Russo, N.M., & Lipton, M. (2009). Social-emotional learning skill, self-regulation, and social competence in typically-developing and clinic-referred children. Journal of Clinical Child and Adolescent Psychology, 38(6), 858–871.
Social-emotional learning skill (SEL) includes the ability to encode, interpret, and reason about social and emotional information. In two related studies, we examined the relationship between children’s SEL skill, their ability to regulate their own behavior, and the competence of their social interactions. Study 1 included 158 typically developing children ages 4 to 14 years. Study 2 included 126 clinic-referred children ages 5 to 17 years. Both studies included measures of SEL skill and third-party ratings of children’s self-regulation and social competence. Findings from both studies supported the conclusion that SEL skill includes three broad factors: awareness of nonverbal cues, the ability to interpret social meaning through theory of mind, empathy, and pragmatic language, and the ability to reason about social problems. Furthermore, the better children perform on measures of SEL skill and the more their parents and teachers report that children can regulate their behavior, the more competent their social interactions. These studies suggest that tests of SEL skill are theoretically coherent and exhibit strong criterion-related validity.
McKown, C., & Strambler, M. (2009). Developmental antecedents and social and academic consequences of stereotype-consciousness in middle childhood. Child Development, (80)6, 1643–59.
The present study, which included 124 children ages 5 to 11, examined developmental antecedents and social and academic consequences of stereotype-consciousness, defined as awareness of others’ stereotypes. Greater age and more frequent parent-child discussions about race were associated with greater likelihood of stereotype-consciousness. Children who knew of broadly held stereotypes more often explained hypothetical negative interracial encounters between White actors and Black targets as discriminatory. In addition, among African American and Latino children who knew about broadly held stereotypes, diagnostic testing conditions led to stereotype threat effects on a standardized working memory task. Findings are discussed in terms of the contribution to our understanding of children’s developing thinking about and response to stereotypes and related phenomena.
2009 Scientific Conference Presentations
McKown, C., Russo, N., & Lipton, M. (2009, May). Joint effects of nonverbal accuracy and nonverbal processing speed on social functioning among children with autism-spectrum disorders and their typically-developing peers. Poster presentation at the annual International Meeting for Autism Research, Chicago, IL.
Russo, N., McKown, C., & Lipton, M. (2009, May). Affect recognition skills across four nonverbal channels in children with autism-spectrum disorders and their typically-developing peers. Poster presentation at the annual International Meeting for Autism Research, Chicago, IL.
McKown, C. (2009, April). Stereotype-consciousness and children’s interpretation of inter-racial interactions. In M. Killen (chair), Inter-group relations and child development. Symposium presentated at the biennial meeting of the Society for Research in Child Development, Denver, CO.
Warren, H.K., Rhoades, B.L., Way, E., Kalb, S.K., Denham, S.A., & Domitrovich, C.E. (2009, May). Do preschoolers’ social cognitions predict their actual behavior? Preliminary findings from two large samples. Poster presentation at the annual meeting of the Society for Prevention Research, Washington, D.C.
2008 Scientific Conference Presentations
McKown, C., Lipton, M.E., & Wood, L.M. (2008, May). Understanding and assessing social-emotional learning processing impairments in children with and without autism-spectrum disorders. Poster presented at the annual International Meeting for Autism Research, London, England, UK.
McKown, C., Wood, L.M., & Lipton, M.E. (2008, March). A demonstration of individually administered tests of children’s social-emotional learning ability. Demonstration at the Annual Meeting of the American Educational Research Association, New York, NY.
McKown, C., (2008, March). Developmental mediators and social and academic consequences of stereotype-consciousness in middle childhood. In A.M. Gonzalez (Chair), Influencing Academic Success Among Underrepresented Youth. Symposium conducted at the Annual Meeting of the American Educational Research Association, New York, NY.
McKown, C., Lipton, M.E., & Wood, L.M. (2008, March). Theory and practice in the assessment of children’s social-emotional learning ability. Poster presented at the Annual Meeting of the American Educational Research Association, New York, NY.
Usher, C.T., McKown, C., & Lipton, M.E. (2008, January). Mentalizing matters: Perspective-taking as a predictor of social acceptance in school-aged children. Poster presented at the Annual Meeting of the American Psychoanalytic Association, New York, NY.
McKown, C. (2007). Concurrent validity and clinical usefulness of several individually administered tests of children’s social emotional cognition. Journal of Clinical Child and Adolescent Psychology, 36(1), 29–41.
Examined the validity of five tests of children’s social emotional cognition, defined as their encoding, memory, and interpretation of social information. Participants included a clinic-referred sample of 126 children between the ages of 5 and 17. Evaluated each test’s (a) concurrent validity, (b) incremental validity, and © clinical usefulness in predicting social functioning. Tests included measures of nonverbal sensitivity (Diagnostic Assessment of Nonverbal Accuracy; Memory for Faces subtests of the Children’s Memory Scales), social language (Comprehension subtest of the Wechsler scales; Pragmatic Language subtest of the Comprehensive Assessment of Spoken Language), and social problem solving (Test of Problem Solving). Criterion measures included parent and teacher report of social functioning from the Behavioral Assessment System for Children. Analyses support the concurrent validity of all measures, and the incremental validity and clinical usefulness of tests of pragmatic language and problem-solving.
2007 Scientific Conference Presentations
Balthazor, M.J., McKown, C., Lipton, M.E., & Wood, L.M. (2007, March). Development of a social interest scale for children ages 8 to 12: Initial evidence for reliability and validity. Poster presented at the biennial meeting of the Society for Research in Child Development, Boston, MA.
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