Social responsivity: judging signals of young children with and without developmental delays

This was an experimental study of the ability of adults to detect 1 social signal that is important in social interactions, children's glances or looks at their social partners. Adult judges were either parents of children with developmental delays, parents of nondelayed children, or nonparents with little experience with children. Each participant viewed 120 videotaped episode in which very young children's looks (of 2 types, either a focus on parent's face or nonface focus) occurred or no looking occurred. Half the episodes featured children with documented developmental delays and half featured nondelayed children. Participants made judgments about the occurrence of a look in each episode and rated their confidence in each judgment. Participants made more accurate and quicker responses to social looks by children without than those with developmental delays. Accuracy effects were qualified by interactions with type of look. Participants were more confident of their judgments of looks for nondelayed toddlers than those with delays. Signal detection statistics indicated that looks of delayed toddlers were harder to identify and that judges set a more stringent criterion for responding to those looks. No effects of judges' level of experience with delayed or nondelayed children were found. Implications of these findings for social interaction involving individuals with developmental delays are discussed.