Dynamic Assessment of perspective taking in individuals with intellectual disability (DynPer)

• Applicant: Dr. Isabel Neitzel
• Subject Area: Applied Linguistics, Computational Linguistics
• Term: since 2024
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 541180876

Communicating perspectives and intentions is a central aspect of everyday and social participation. Taking a different perspective is a key social-communicative skill. Since a perspective has to be not only taken in terms of cognition, but also verbalised, both linguistic and cognitive skills are involved in a complex way. Previous research has tended to focus on only one of these areas, ignoring possible dissociations between the subskills. The DynPer project aims to apply the so-called dynamic assessment approach, which takes into account situational factors (e.g. familiarity with the other person, materials) as well as a person's learning behaviour in the diagnostic setting, to people with intellectual disabilities (ID). The research focus of the project is the assessment of linguistic perspective taking in order to take into account the high communicative and interpersonal relevance of this aspect.The assessment of perspective taking in the communicative setting of individuals with ID requires appropriate instruments. Not only is there a lack of standardised procedures for this target group, but instruments that take into account the variable demands of interpersonal perspective taking represent a gap in diagnostic research for people with ID. The aim of the DynPer project is to assess the perspective-taking abilities of people with ID in a way that is appropriate for this target group. Graduated prompting methods and a test-teach-retest design, which are the most common methods in dynamic assessment research, will be used. DynPer aims to provide a comprehensive picture of the linguistic realisation of perspective taking in communicative contexts. The DynPer project conducts research at the interface between language and cognition diagnostics and the specific assessment of perspective taking (e.g. in narrative situations). In order to obtain a comprehensive picture of the potential of dynamic assessment approaches in individuals with ID, the project will include both individuals with ID of different etiology who are likely to show language and cognitive impairments (ID+ group) and individuals who are more likely to have impairments in perspective taking (ASD+ID+ group). In contrast, a comparison group without ID but with expected impairments in perspective taking will be studied (group ASD+ID-). In terms of basic research, the DynPer project aims on the one hand to open up Dynamic Assessment for language diagnostics in people with ID, which could sustainably improve the diagnostic care of this target group. In addition, it aims to increase basic knowledge about the relationship between language, cognition and perspective taking.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants