When "Emily Dickinson" met "Steven Spielberg": Assessing social information processing in literacy contexts

Current research and theory on social information processing is used to fra me the peer interactions of "Emily Dickinson," a 16-year-old girl with a lo ng history of oral language problems and social isolation, but strong inter ests in literacy. In ongoing assessment that prioritized authentic and ecol ogically valid data collected in classroom settings, the Crick and Dodge (1 994) model was used to guide an analysis of Emily's social-cognitive abilit ies and disabilities during peer interaction. These observations revealed t hat Emily had evolved a social schema that strategically recruited her stro ng literacy interests and skills to initiate and mediate social interaction with peers. This suggests that literacy curricula may be a valuable site f or assessing and scaffolding social/communication problem-solving in studen ts with language disabilities.