Early detection of social interaction problems: Development of a social interaction instrument in young children

Children with developmental or psychiatric disorders often have problems wi th social interaction. This study reports on the development of the Ghuman- Folstein Screen for Social Interaction (SSI), a parent/caregiver questionna ire designed to measure the capacity for basic social interaction skills ac ross a variety of contexts in preschool children. The SSI was administered to 51 clinically referred children with a high probability of deficits in s ocial interaction and 60 healthy control subjects to establish reliability and validity. The children were 24 to 61 months of age, with diverse ethnic and socioeconomic backgrounds. Strong internal consistency, significant co rrelation for test/retest reliability, moderate correlation for interrater reliability and support for external validity of the SSI was established. T he SSI scores differentiated between the clinically referred subjects and h ealthy control subjects and between children with pervasive developmental d isorder (PDD) of the autistic type and other non-PDD developmental disorder s. The SSI is a relatively simple, efficient, reliable, and valid measure f or the capacity for basic social interaction skills in children 24 months t o 5 years of age. The SSI has a potential to be useful in primary health ca re settings to identify children at risk who may need tracking and/or furth er evaluation and treatment services.