Social Abilities includes:
- Being aware of others
- Understanding the behaviours of others
- Showing interest in people (not just things)
- Theory of Mind (realising others have thoughts, feelings, experiences and understanding seperate from ourselves)
- Understanding of and compliance to social norms
- Shifting attention between a person and an object, for the purposes of sharing the experience (joint attention)
- Understanding instructions or requests (receptive language)
- Communicating wants and needs via gesture, facial expression, body language, visuals or verbally (expressive language)
- Making a comment about something or recounting information (eg explaining what happened)
- Ability to be understood by a communication partner (e.g. clarity, volume of speech)
How Social Abilities can support self regulation:
Our social abilities impact our self regulation by helping us understand and respond appropriately to other people’s cues and behaviour. By being able to predict the actions of another person, we are able to prepare and adjust our response accordingly. Social skills allow us to know what is expected in various situations, so that we are able to match our attention and arousal levels accordingly. Our social awareness allows us to understand how our actions may be perceived by others, allowing us to understand or prepare for their reaction.
Being able to communicate to others allows us to express how we are feeling, what is bothering us, or what we like or dislike about a situation. When an individual has good communication skills, they are able to express what they want or need, and seek assistance in gaining this if required. Strong receptive communication skills (understanding what is being communicated) allow us to understand the requirements of a situation, or understand what another person is expressing to us. Communication includes shared attention and non verbal cues, such as facial expression and body language. An ability to recognise how another person is feeling is crucial in responding appropriately. Strong communication skills allow us to recount an event, which is an important tool for processing and moving on, especially for emotionally distressing events.
How issues with Social Abilities may impact self regulation:
Poor social skills or awareness may present in inappropriate social interaction and misunderstanding the response of others. An individual with social difficulties may not understand how others are perceiving their behaviour, and may not alter their response to accommodate for their perceptions. Poor social awareness may mean an individual does not understand that others feel differently than they do.
Poor social skills and awareness may result in not fitting attention and arousal levels to the social expectations or demands of a situation. For example, picture someone watching a sporting match in a bar, after their team has just won a close and exciting game. An appropriate response given this scenario would include yelling, jumping up and down, and hugging strangers. Now picture that excited person walks out of the bar and past a church where a funeral is being held. Is that same response still appropriate? While this is quite a clear cut and exaggerated example, the same principles can apply for individuals with deficits or difficulties in their social skills and awareness.
Poor communication skills may result in additional frustration as an individual is unable to express what is bothering them. They may be unable to effectively communicate what they need or want, and may resort to more dangerous or socially inappropriate behaviours in order to gain or avoid an item or attention. Their feelings may be misinterpreted by others, which is both frustrating and detrimental to co-regulation support. For example, a child that has been teased may appear angry, with clenched fists, a red face and raised voice, when in fact they are sad or hurt. Being unable to express what the issue was will impact on the child learning appropriate response behaviours.
A specific example of difficulties with Social Abilities:
Whilst working at a school, the Speech Pathologist and I received a request from a classroom teacher to help develop her students’ play skills. The students had a variety of play levels, and we assessed and then targeted the needed skills for each student. Two students had difficulties with the social aspect of play in particular. Discussions with the teacher indicated that these difficulties with social skills impacted on the student’s regulation frequently throughout the day. The students would frequently need assistance to manage situations where there has been a social misunderstanding, or clash in ideas. The students’ learning intentions and the majority of her teaching was focussed on social skills such as sharing and managing their emotions in a social context.
Both students had good language skills and pretend play skills. They were able to play out elaborate play themes, with object substitution and use of dolls. Their play however was not cooperative, and was mostly parallel play with brief and infrequent intersections of ideas. The Speech Pathologist and I begun structuring the play sessions more rigidly. One student would be the ‘play leader’ for half the session, and the other student for the second half. The ‘play leader’ would choose a theme from a choice of 3-4 presented and we would then follow their lead in the play. Between us, we would support the ‘play leader’ to communicate their ideas, and the other student to listen and respond to these ideas.
At first the sessions were extremely challenging, with both students needing frequent prompts to “tune in” and respond appropriately to their peer. As they were both very determined and fast paced, this was tougher than it sounds! After a few sessions however, they needed less prompts and the role of ‘play leader’ faded into cooperative play. Their teacher reported that their negotiation and sharing skills had improved significantly, both during play sessions as well as throughout various activities such as group time and outside play.
Using play as a medium to teach social skills and awareness was extremely useful as it is fun, engaging and provides many opportunities to express a variety of emotions in a short space of time. Helping the students first become aware of each other’s thoughts and feelings, and then support them to develop the skills needed to respond appropriately in a safe and controlled environment allowed them to generalise this to day to day experiences.