RESEARCH ARTICLE Optimizing Cross-Sectional Prediction of Social Functioning in Youth Referred for Neuropsychological Testing

The current study aimed to establish a fine-grained, efficient characterization of the concur-rent neuropsychological contributions to social functioning in neuropsychologically-referred youth. A secondary aim was to demonstrate a useful statistic approach for such investiga-tions (Partial Least Squares Regression; PLSR), which is underutilized in this field. Forty-five participants (70 – 164 months; Mage = 110.89; 34 male) were recruited from a large neuropsychological assessment clinic. Participants completed subtests from the NEPSY-II focusing on neuropsychological constructs that have been linked to social functioning (af-fect decoding, social memory, motor skills, visuomotor skills, response inhibition, attention and set-shifting, and verbal comprehension). Mothers completed the BASC-2, from which Atypicality and Social Skills scales were analyzed. PLSR revealed that difficulty with social memory, sensorimotor integration, and the ability to attend to and accurately discriminate auditory stimuli combine to best predict atypical or “odd ” behavior. In terms of social skills, two factors emerged. The first factor indicated that, counterintuitively, greater emotional per-ception, visuospatial perception, ability to attend to and accurately discriminate auditory sti