Social thinking: Teaching the “why” of social skills

by Jean Winegardner

- SILVER SPRING, Md., — For a long time in the autism community, social skills teaching has been a crucial component of therapy. This often rote learning of scripts and strategies aimed at helping kids interact with their peers is a standard—and valuable—way to enhance a child’s chance of success in the world.

However, in recent years, more and more speech-language pathologists (SLPs) have turned to social thinking, a new way of teaching social competence espoused by Michelle Garcia Winner, the founder of this new school of thought and its associated methodology.

Rockville, Maryland-based SLP Susan Abrams has been teaching social thinking in individual, group and camp settings for the past five years. She also conducts parent coaching to help parents learn how to encourage social thinking full time at home. According to Abrams, “Social thinking is the ‘why’ behind the social skills.”

For example, instead of teaching a child to look at a peer’s face or eyes when having a conversation, an SLP using social thinking techniques would tell that child why doing so is important. “The ‘why’ is because you gain a lot of information: you’re interested in them, you’re trying to read their social cues, you’re gaining information about them,” explains Abrams. “Eye contact is not just the behavior of looking at me.”

While typical children may instinctively pick up on the reasons behind social rules and mores—saying thank you shows you appreciate a gift, showing interest in an activity is a good way to instigate a play session, looking at someone’s face shows you are interested in what they are saying—children with autism may not. Sometimes these children will get stuck on choosing between scripts they have been taught rather than understanding the reasons behind the script.

The goal of social thinking thus becomes not just socially appropriate behavior, but thoughtful understanding of these socially appropriate behaviors, as well as fostering social curiosity about others. Furthermore, social thinking therapists teach children how to read nonverbal cues and respond to them.

Social thinking can help kids with autism learn to successfully interact with their peers.

Chicago-based SLP Jordan Sadler has been using social thinking strategies with her clients for the past 9 years. She tells of a 5-year-old she worked with who had many imaginative ideas, but would disengage from his peers to act them out on his own. Sadler says that she gave the child some examples of what to say to a group of kids when he had a new play idea, but what really mattered to him was when she explained why he should say those things—namely, if you just walk away and start playing another game without saying anything, the other kids will probably think that you don’t like them very much.

“That was an aha moment for this child,” says Sadler. “He was completely shocked. Since that day, he has done a much better job of staying with other kids in his pretend play and in our summer social group. In fact, he has referenced that conversation with me a few times, in the moment, letting me know that he understands why it’s so important that he should stay connected with the other kids.”

It’s not just therapists that are seeing results with social thinking. Cree Costello, a 5-year-old with autism, has been working with Susan Abrams for about a year. His mother, Melanie, says that when he started social thinking therapy he couldn’t form questions, had difficulty recognizing nonverbal gestures and had difficulty initiating play with peers.

via Social thinking: Teaching the “why” of social skills | Washington Times Communities.