Social Skills
What is Social Communication?
Social communication is the use of language in social contexts. It encompasses social interaction, social cognition, pragmatics, and language processing.
Social Interaction
How and why we interact with others in joint activities and use language reciprocally. Includes social reasoning and conflict resolution skills.
Social Cognition
The cognitive processes we use whilst interacting with others; emotional competence and regulation, executive functioning, inference, joint-attention, presupposition.
Pragmatics
How we choose to use language (both verbal and non-verbal) in different situations and our understanding of the “unwritten” rules of conversation.
These can include communication purpose, discourse style, topic maintenance and turn taking.
Language Processing
Understanding and using language in both spoken and written forms (higher level language such as non-literal or ambiguous language, sarcasm and humour or inferences).
What Effects Social Communication?
There are many things that impact the way we interact with others. This could include:
individual personality traits (e.g. shy and quiet versus outgoing and confident)
mental health (e.g. feeling sad or haveing low mood, compared with feeling happy and energised)
the ability to manage emotions (e.g. coping with frustration)
cognitive and communication skills (e.g. some learning difficulties, langauge difficulties and literacy difficulties)
some neurodiversities such as Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD or ASC), ADHD (Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder), Attachment Disorders, DLD (Developmental Language Disorder), SCD (Social Communication Disorder), dyspraxia. A lot of these conditions can co-occur to provide difficulties with social skills that will present similarly.
Examples of Social Communication Skills:
Listening skills - use of non-obligatory responses etc ('hmm, 'yes', 'really', etc)
Having an awareness of your listeners needs (their feeling, etc.)
Asking for, giving and responding to information
Turn taking
Appropriate use of eye contact
Introducing and maintaining topics of conversation
Making relevant contributions to a topic
Asking and answering questions effectively
Avoiding repetitious/redundant language
Asking for clarification
Adjusting language based on the situation
Using language of a given peer group, social situation or context
Responding to and using nonliteral language (sarcasm, figurative language, humour etc)
Using appropriate strategies for gaining attention and interrupting
Asking for help or offering help appropriately
Offering/responding to expressions of affection appropriately
NEURODIVERSITY - click here for further information
It is important to remember that Communication is not about making the "right" amount of eye contact or smiling at the "right" moment. Instead, communication is a useful tool that allows us to better understand, connect and empathise with others. This is especially so for interacting with those who may think in different ways to us. We may do more harm than good if we expect individuals to communicate in certain 'rule bound ways'. We need to ask ourselves instead: how can I better understand and accomodate neurodivergent communication needs in my classroom?
Strategies to Support Social Communication Skills
Remember these are to support understanding for young people NOT to change their behaviour!
Social Stories (link takes you to www.autism.org.uk)- Stories written to positively depict a situation in which a student has a difficult time- providing the student with appropriate ways to interact or respond (Carol Gray) example
Comic Strip Conversations (link takes you to www.autism.org.uk) - Comic strip conversations provide visual representations of the different levels of communication that take place in a conversation, using symbols, stick figure drawings and colour. By seeing the different elements of a conversation presented visually, some of the more abstract aspects of social communication (such as recognising the feelings and intentions of others) are made more 'concrete' and are therefore easier to understand.(Carol Gray) example1 example 2 example 3
Visual schedules - Provide students who may need visual input to assist with transitions, expectations for the day. See section on visual schedules
Allow students to work in a group with students who are accepting and supportive.
Search for opportunities that support appropriate social interactions - i.e. ‘Helen, will you please go to Jack’s desk and ask him to bring me his folder.’
Avoid having activities where students ‘pick’ a partner. Assign partners instead to avoid feelings of rejection.
Board games and card games can be beneficial as they promote turn taking and sportsmanship. You may need to be available to support sportsmanship and help young people to remember that playing the game is more important than winning the game.
Comment on positive models for targeted social skill when used by other students in the classroom - ‘John, I really like how you put your hand up instead of interrupting me when I was explaining to the class’.
Consider teaching specific skills - initiating, maintaining and ending a conversation, apologising, etc. You will need to give opportunities for them to understand the skill in the context, practise it and use it in real life situations (these also may need to to established).
Turn-taking games: Engage in turn taking games, such as board games to teach the child that it is ‘okay to lose’.
Facial Expressions: Look at facial expressions and discuss the feelings associated with the facial expressions.
Teach emotional vocabulary: Explicitly teach a wide range of vocabulary for each emotion (e.g. Angry: mad, frustrated, irate, furious, etc.)
Label emotions a student displays in the moment to allow them to link their feelings to relevent vocabulary.
Miming: Practice through miming making faces that show different feelings.
Toilet Social story.pdfSocial Stories - Master-2.pdf