The development and psychometric properties of a measure of social and adaptive functioning for children and adolescents

Developed, piloted, and examined the psychometric properties of the Child and Adolescent Social and Adaptive Functioning Scale (CASAFS), a self-report measure designed to examine the social functioning of young people in the areas of school performance, peer relationships, family relationships, and home duties/self-care. The findings of confirmatory and exploratory factor analysis support a 4-factor solution consistent with the hypothesized domains. Fit indexes suggested that the 4-correlated factor model represented a satisfactory solution for the data, with the covariation between factors being satisfactorily explained by a single, higher order factor reflecting social and adaptive functioning in general. The internal consistency and 12-month test-retest reliability of the total scale was acceptable. A significant, negative correlation was found between the CASAFS and a measure of depressive symptoms, showing that high levels of social functioning are associated with low levels of depression. Significant differences in CASAFS total and subscale scores were found between clinically depressed adolescents and a matched sample of nonclinical controls. Adolescents who reported elevated but subclinical levels of depression also reported lower levels of social functioning in comparison to nonclinical controls.

A cognitive complexity metric applied to cognitive development

Two experiments tested predictions from a theory in which processing load depends on relational complexity (RC), the number of variables related in a single decision. Tasks from six domains (transitivity, hierarchical classification, class inclusion, cardinality, relative-clause sentence comprehension, and hypothesis testing) were administered to children aged 3-8 years. Complexity analyses indicated that the domains entailed ternary relations (three variables). Simpler binary-relation (two variables) items were included for each domain. Thus RC was manipulated with other factors tightly controlled. Results indicated that (i) ternary-relation items were more difficult than comparable binary-relation items, (ii) the RC manipulation was sensitive to age-related changes, (iii) ternary relations were processed at a median age of 5 years, (iv) cross-task correlations were positive, with all tasks loading on a single factor (RC), (v) RC factor scores accounted for 80% (88%) of age-related variance in fluid intelligence (compositionality of sets), (vi) binary- and ternary-relation items formed separate complexity classes, and (vii) the RC approach to defining cognitive complexity is applicable to different content domains. (C) 2002 Elsevier Science (USA). All rights reserved.