Social detective intermediate

You are a Social Detective, introduced students to the different skills required in order to make the best social decisions. You can read more about You are a Social Detective over here

You are a Social Detective – Intermediate app picks up where the beginner app leaves off. It focuses on identifying the social skills to facilitate interaction in the student’s environment.These include using the tools of seeing, hearing, knowing and feeling in order to interpret social situations.

The Notebook – Allows students to practice decoding social skills. The student makes a ‘smart guess’ about the social situation based on the thoughts and emotions of the characters in the social scenes. There are 42 questions with video clips in the notebook section.

Once the notebook is complete, the student earns the Social Detective Flashlight.

There are 41 questions with video clips in this task and two levels of difficulty.

The Flashlight allows students to practice their skills. The student has to make a decision based on what they can see in the video and work out what others are thinking. These tasks also encourage the student to predict what will happen next. If the student makes the correct choice, the video clip reinforces the choice and shows what will happen. If the student makes an incorrect choice, the video is replayed and can be discussed.

The difficulty level increases as the student progresses. The student is required to identify which tools they used in order to make their decision. This is a fantastic way of making social awareness skills conscious.

What I would like:

Once the student has made a choice, the app automatically advances to the next question. I would like the ability to control the pace of the app, so that different scenarios can be discussed with the student.

I would really like the ability to select which video clips are played, since some situations are more relevant for particular children.

I would like to be able to hide/show the answer choices. This would allow the difficulty level to be increased/decreased depending on the student’s level.

What I like:

The videos are engaging and interesting for students and it is a great way to incorporate social skills into each session.

The student’s progress is saved, which allows you to address a few scenarios in each session.

The use of video modelling using real children is really useful for facilitating social skills in context.

The choice options are read aloud, and the app can be easily used with students who are not yet reading.

The findings of my recent study (unpublished), showed that SLPs consider a number of features of apps as important and beneficial for speech-language intervention with children. These findings were considered together with the supporting literature base.

The feature-matching checklist presented below identifies the features in the Social Detective intermediate app.

Please feel free to make use of this checklist with credit.

Feature Matching Checklist – Nikki Heyman
Feature	Description	Yes	No
Theme	Child Friendly Theme with familiar characters	X
Screen	Clean interface no additional pictures/words on screen
	Some additional pictures/words on the screen	X
	Many additional pictures/words on the screen		X
	Ability to remove screen elements		X
Interactivity	Allows for interactivity with images on screen		X
	Some interactivity with images on screen		X
	Touch/drag with images on screen	X
Images	Animation		X
	Photographs		X
	Colour illustration	X
	Video	X
Developmental Levels	More than 3 levels		X
	2 – 3 levels	X
	Only 1 level		X
Examples per Level	More than 20 examples	X
	11 – 20 examples
	Less than 10 examples
Activity selection	Allows user to select specific activity or items		X
Repetition	Target can be repeated	X
Pace	Items can be skipped within the app		X
Pace	App can be paused at any stage		X
Record Feature	Available		X
Error Response	Immediate	X
	Option to try again	X
	Visual display e.g. cross or tick	X
	Sound reflects incorrect response	X
	Reduce level of difficulty		X
	Corrective audio feedback		X
Voice	Child voice	X
	Adult voice	X
	Accent choice		X
Reward	Choice of games		X
	One game		X
	Star chart/token reward		X
Customisation	User Profiles		X
	Text on/off		X
	Background noise on/off
	Sounds on/off		X
	Error response can be adjusted		X
Data	Save Progress	X
Data	Report generation	X
Content	Description refers to EBP in the development of content & techniques	X
	Description refers to EBP in development
	No reference to EBP

You are a Social Detective – Intermediate is available on the app store for $24.99

Thank you to Social Skill Builder Inc who provided me with a copy of the app to review. All opinions are my own.