What is the difference between social skills and social communication?
Students with behavioural difficulties present with complex behaviours and interactions. Therefore it is important to look beyond pragmatics (social skills) when attempting to evaluate social interactions.
Social communication: Involves sensory and cognitive skills as well as being aware that there are consequences for a behaviour (McDonald, Turkstra, & Togher 2012). It involves looking beyond social skills (pragmatics) when attempting to evaluate social interactions.
Social skills: Are the combined verbal and non-verbal skills we use to communicate and interact with others. Non-verbal skills (pragmatics) include tone of voice, facial expressions, body language and conversational skills (i.e. turn taking). Effective social skills allow us to recognise the different social situations and adjust our behaviour accordingly e.g. recognise the difference between playfulness, sarcasm and possible conflict.
How do impaired social communication skills impact on learning?
Children/adolescents with language difficulties often have difficulty knowing how to use their language to successfully communicate. This means:
- they often don't know when or how to ask for help.
- They have trouble adapting their communication needs to the person they are talking to and social contexts. This means they find themselves in trouble in the classroom as they speak inappropriately to teachers and other staff.
- They have difficulty interpreting social cues, following and monitoring social rules and understanding social consequences (Rinaldi 2003)
- They have trouble understanding tone and reading body language so misinterpret humour and sarcasm. This results in them over-reacting or under reacting to situations.
Often students with behavioural difficulties can tell you what they did wrong or that they saw a situation that was ‘wrong' because they have ‘rope learnt' the answers to these situations. But when asked, they cannot explain why it was wrong and what should have been done instead (unless they have heard the response previously)
This suggests that they may not know why an action is wrong. They know it is because they have been constantly told that it is. Generally, we ask students ‘what could you have done instead?' What we need to be asking is ‘why was that wrong?' in order to gauge their true comprehension of the situation. Or even ask ‘how do you know that was wrong?' You may need to teach them how to think through the problem or situation – what things do they need to consider.