The Simons Foundation Autism Research Initiative (SFARI) has launched SPARKForAutism.org, a dynamic platform that is engaging thousands of individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and connecting them to researchers. By making all data accessible, SPARK seeks to increase our understanding of ASD and accelerate new supports and treatments for ASD.

Social-emotional comprehension includes the ability to encode, interpret, and reason about social-emotional information. The better developed children's social-emotional comprehension, the more positive their social interactions and the better their peer relationships. Many clinical tools exist to assess children's social behavior. In contrast, fewer clinically interpretable tools are available to assess children's social-emotional comprehension. This study evaluated the psychometric properties of a group of direct assessments of social-emotional comprehension. Scores on these assessments reflected children's performance on challenging tasks that required them to demonstrate their social-emotional comprehension. In 2 independent samples, including a general education school sample (n = 174) and a clinic sample (n = 119), this study provided evidence that (a) individual assessments yield variably reliable scores, (b) composite scores are highly reliable, (c) direct assessments demonstrate a theoretically coherent factor structure and convergent and discriminant validity, and (d) composite scores yield expected age- and diagnostic-group differences. Implications for clinical practice, theory, and assessment development are discussed.

This article presents results from two studies that included ethnically and socioeconomically diverse samples totaling 4,462 children in kindergarten through third grade. Each study examined the psychometric properties of a web-based, self-administered battery of assessments of social-emotional comprehension called “SELweb.” Assessment modules measured children’s ability to read facial expressions, infer others’ perspectives, solve social problems, delay gratification, and tolerate frustration. Both studies provided evidence that (a) individual assessment modules exhibited moderate to high internal consistency and low to moderate test–retest reliability; (b) composite assessment scores exhibited high reliability; (c) together, assessment modules demonstrated a theoretically coherent factor structure; (d) factor scores demonstrated convergent and discriminant validity; and (e) controlling for IQ and demographic characteristics, performance on the assessment modules was positively related to peer acceptance, teacher report of social skills, and multiple indicators of academic achievement, and negatively related to teacher report of problem behaviors.

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Social-emotional comprehension involves encoding, interpreting, and reasoning about social-emotional information, and selfregulating. This study examined the mediating pathways through which social-emotional comprehension and social behaviour are related to academic outcomes in two ethnically and socioeconomically heterogeneous samples totaling 340 elementary-aged children. In both samples, social-emotional comprehension, teacher report of social behaviour, and academic outcomes were measured in a single school year. In both samples, structural equation models showed that the relationship between social-emotional comprehension and reading was mediated by socially skilled behaviour. In one sample, but not the other, the relationship between social-emotional comprehension and math was mediated by socially skilled behaviour. This paper advances our understanding of the mechanisms through which social-emotional factors are associated with academic outcomes.