SLP Social and Cognitive Communication 5 — Questions and Answers
Question 1: A high school student with social communication disorder struggles to understand implied meanings in text messages (e.g., 'Sure. Whatever.'). This reflects impaired:
- Decoding of graphemes
- Interpretation of indirect speech acts and tone (Correct answer)
- Phonological memory
- Morphosyntactic parsing
Correct answer: Interpretation of indirect speech acts and tone
Interpreting sarcastic or indirect digital communication requires pragmatic inference — reading the implied rather than literal meaning of an utterance.
Question 2: Which evidence-based social communication intervention uses role-play, video review, and peer coaching with adolescents and young adults?
- PROMPT
- PEERS (Program for the Education and Enrichment of Relational Skills) (Correct answer)
- Nuffield Dyspraxia Program
- Lidcombe Program
Correct answer: PEERS (Program for the Education and Enrichment of Relational Skills)
PEERS is a manualized, evidence-based social skills intervention for teens and young adults that uses didactic instruction, role-play, and peer coaching to build friendships.
Question 3: A child produces utterances that are grammatically correct but contextually irrelevant to the ongoing topic. This is termed:
- Phonological regression
- Tangential or off-topic responding (Correct answer)
- Syntactic simplification
- Semantic paraphasia
Correct answer: Tangential or off-topic responding
Tangential responding — producing grammatically intact but contextually off-target utterances — reflects a pragmatic breakdown in topic maintenance rather than a structural language deficit.
Question 4: Cognitive load theory is relevant to social communication intervention because:
- It explains why phonological errors increase under stress
- High cognitive load reduces available resources for social monitoring and regulation (Correct answer)
- It predicts articulation error patterns in connected speech
- It governs the frequency of disfluencies during conversation
Correct answer: High cognitive load reduces available resources for social monitoring and regulation
When cognitive resources are taxed by task demands, fewer resources remain for social monitoring, pragmatic inference, and self-regulation during communication.
Question 5: Which of the following BEST describes the social communication profile of an individual with Williams syndrome?
- Hyperverbal, socially engaging, with relative strength in social cognition despite cognitive limitations (Correct answer)
- Nonverbal, with severe pragmatic deficits and restricted interests
- Intact syntax with pragmatic indifference to social partners
- Severely reduced verbal output with strong nonverbal social skills
Correct answer: Hyperverbal, socially engaging, with relative strength in social cognition despite cognitive limitations
Williams syndrome is characterized by hypersociability and a relatively strong drive for social engagement despite general cognitive impairment and specific visuospatial weaknesses.
Question 6: Which term describes the use of nonverbal behaviors — such as nodding, gaze, and back-channeling — to support conversational flow?
- Paralinguistic cues (Correct answer)
- Suprasegmental features
- Phonosemantic mapping
- Lexical priming
Correct answer: Paralinguistic cues
Paralinguistic cues are nonverbal communicative signals that accompany verbal messages and regulate conversational dynamics including turn-taking and listener engagement.
Question 7: An SLP working with a client with dementia focuses on supported conversation techniques. The PRIMARY goal is to:
- Restore lost vocabulary through drill
- Maximize communicative participation and dignity despite cognitive decline (Correct answer)
- Improve sentence-level syntax production
- Retrain rapid word retrieval for nouns
Correct answer: Maximize communicative participation and dignity despite cognitive decline
Supported conversation approaches in dementia prioritize maintaining communicative participation and quality of life rather than restoring impaired cognitive-linguistic functions.
SLP Social and Cognitive Communication 5
A high school student with social communication disorder struggles to understand implied meanings in text messages (e.g., 'Sure.
Whatever.').
This reflects impaired: