Beyond static scoring: an interactional case study on the assessment of social-pragmatic inferencing skills of an autistic girl

Purpose: Social-pragmatic inferencing skills are often examined using structured assessment methods that are administered in dyadic interaction situations involving a testee and a tester. Such assessments commonly build on static pass-or-fail scoring criteria that are not designed as sensitive to the interactional aspects of the assessment administration. Methods: In this single case study, we drew on discursive psychology and conversation analysis to examine whether the study of social interaction between an autistic girl (6;8 years), whom we call Liisa, and a tester during a theory of mind assessment administration could inform about Liisa’s social-pragmatic inferencing ability beyond the scoring criteria stated in the assessment manual. Results: The study shows that the qualitative moment-by-moment examination of interaction between Liisa and the tester reveals aspects of Liisa’s social-pragmatic inferencing ability that are not captured by the static scoring criteria, such as the coordination of turn-taking and conversational repair. The contextualised examination of Liisa’s conduct also allows to observe the reasoning of her answers to the theory of mind test questions. Conclusions: The findings encourage to consider the interactional aspects of structured assessment administration as a source of rich data to be scrutinised with qualitative analysis both in research and clinical practice.