Introduction to Teaching Social Skills

1. Introduction to Teaching Social Skills Presented by: Candace A. Fugazy MA.Edu, BCBA & Megan Mayo, BA 8/20/10

2. Why is Social Development so Important? Research states that : People with friends are …. • Happier/fewer instances of mental health disorders (e.g., depression) • Healthier/Live Longer • Less likely to be victims of crime (or bullying) • Overall positive outcomes

3. Why is Social Development so Important? (Cont.) • Social relations act as a natural support function. - Help us accomplish goals and tasks. - Helps gain entry into social groups/more friends = more support. • Can aid in the stimulation of language development/more natural language. • Interaction with peers allows children to acquire and practice learned skills. - modeling - feedback

4. Why is Social Development so Important? (Cont.) • Establishes a feeling of behavioral competency, support and belonging. • It is not necessary to be social all of the time but skills are needed to draw people to you. If kids are un-responsive, peers will be un-responsive too. • Best prediction of positive, long term outcomes for people with special needs.

5. Diagnostic Criteria for Autism Spectrum Disorder: Three Major Areas of Impairment:

6. The ability to intuitively track what others know and think during personal interactions. The ability to imagine what someone else might be thinking and to know that it those thoughts are different from your own. Deficits in ToM are also referred to as mind-blindness. Can look like selfishness or a lack of empathy ToM difficulties affects comprehension of literature as well as social interactions. Theory of Mind (ToM) and Perspective Taking

7. Asperger’s Syndrome • Impairment in social interactions: theory of mind, difficulty developing age appropriate peer interactions. • Lack of social/emotional reciprocity. • No clinically significant delays in language, cognitive development, self care skills, and adaptive behavior. • Significant delays in social, occupational, or other important areas of functioning. • May seem “oblivious” toward the perspective of others. • May seem one sided or egocentric.

8. Asperger’s Syndrome • Literal thinkers • Difficulty comprehending the idea of “friendships” • Interests often comprise of very rote facts. • May crave social interaction on their “own terms” but may lack emotional connection with others. • May have very flat speech. • May be “clumsy” and have poor handwriting or drawing skills. • Inflexible to social rules-”Hidden Curriculum” makes teaching social rules difficult.

9. Social Deficits in Individuals with Emotional Behavioral Disorder Excess of the following behaviors: • Arguing/ Tantruming • Defiant Behavior and/or Aggressive Behavior • Non-Compliance (most students comply with teacher’s requests 80% of the time, “Tough Kids” only 40%) • Coercive behavior to “get their way” with peers and adults. • Lack of self-management skills

10. Social Deficits in Individuals with Emotional Behavioral Disorder • Academic deficits • Lack of social foundation skills (e.g., initiating conversation, grooming, cooperation, and offering positive feedback to others.) • Lack of Intermediate/Advanced Social Skills-skills building on foundation skills (e.g., accepting negative feedback, assertiveness, saying “No”, resisting peer pressure and teasing, and anger management.) • Students may be socially immature, controlling, withdrawn and non-cooperative.

11. Social Deficits in Individuals with Emotional Behavioral Disorder • Rapid turnover in friendships. Tend to have friendships with younger peers or of similar behavioral difficulty. • Students who often act out and are non-compliant and disruptive during their school years often carry these same behaviors into adulthood. • Generally speaking grow up to have multiple marriages, difficulty holding jobs, and break society’s laws.

12. Learning Disabled Students-Evans, Axelrod and Sapia, 2000, cited from Karvale, KA and Forness, SR, 1996. • 75% of students with learning disabilities possess poor social interactions and inappropriate behaviors in comparison to their peers. • Exhibit fewer positive social behaviors. • Showed less initiative in peer interactions. • Lower rates of peer reinforcement and possessed less cooperative behaviors.

13. Learning Disabled Students-Evans, Axelrod and Sapia, 2000,cited from Green, RW et al., 1996. • Research demonstrates a significant relationship between social impairment and the likelihood of tobacco, alcohol or other drug abuse. This suggests that social impairment “plays a pivotal role in increasing the likelihood of children abusing substances as they progress through adolescence.”

14. Why Don’t All Children Learn Acceptable Social Behaviors? • May not possess the cognitive ability • May not know what the appropriate behaviors are. • The student’s emotional responses may inhibit the performance of the desired behavior (e.g., anxiety, fear or anger). • May have the knowledge but lack the practice.

15. Considerations in Interventions • What skill to target? Examples? • What are the benefits of having this skill? • Does it use their strengths? • Will it motivate the child? • Where can it be used? • How does the child learn best? • How to make it meaningful? • How is the skill going to generalize?

16. Basic Steps to Intervention- Axelrod and Sapia, 2000 • Identify key skills -e.g., look for skills that might lead to punishing results and target them first. Skills that lead to peer acceptance. • Target only a few new skills at a time. • Teach skill in isolation. • Practice in controlled settings. • Prompt/Assess in Uncontrolled settings • Work with educators and parents to know when to ignore, praise and focus attention on certain behaviors to improve pro-social behaviors and increase success.

17. Some Social Skill Interventions • Social Thinking Curriculum/Superflex • Peer Intervention • Social Stories • Comic Strip Conversations • Video Modeling • Contingency Mapping

18. What is Social Thinking? • A instruction-based approach to supporting social behavior. • Explicitly teaches • social rules and norms, • emotional regulation strategies • perspective taking • causes and effects of behavior of self and others • Developed by Michelle Garcia Winner, SLP.

19. Asperger’s Syndrome High Functioning Autism PDD-NOS Nonverbal Learning Disability ADHD Anyone with social cognitive deficits High IQ, and other standardized test scores do not rule out weak social cognition. Anyone with 1) strange behavior, 2) lack of a peer group, or 3) poor school performance compared to what would be predicted based on test scores probably has difficulties with social cognition. Who is Social Thinking for?

20. In what ways may individuals have difficulties with Social Thinking? • Central Coherence Theory • Executive Functioning • Theory of Mind Wetherby, A.M & Prizant, B.M. (2001). Autism Spectrum Disorders; A Transactional Developmental Perspective. Baltimore,MD, Paul Brookes Publishing.

21. The ability to incorporate smaller ideas into a larger concept. Relating parts into a larger pattern of behavior and thought. Deficits in Central Coherence Theory might look like: Conceptual learning disability Difficulties understanding “the big picture” Difficulty making connections between common events Difficulties generalizing learning to new situations. Central Coherence Theory

22. Identifying a problem, identifying a solution, locating resources, making a plan, executing that plan. In more technical terms,EF refers to the neurological processes that are behaviorally manifested as initiating behaviors while inhibiting other behaviors that may interfere with problem solving Regulating attention to filter out distraction and irrelevant information and shifting attention to the relevant information Upload and manipulate mental representations of the plan/behaviors It is action selection and initiation- the integration of memory, perception, affective, and motivation systems. Pennington & Ozonoff (1996). Executive Functions and Developmental Psychopathology. Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry and Allied Disciplines, 37, 51-87 Executive Functioning (EF)

23. I-LAUGH Model • I= Initiation of Communication or Action • L=Listening With Eyes and Brain • A=Abstract and Inferential • U=Understanding Perspective • G=Gestalt Processing: Getting the Big Picture • H=Humor and Human Relatedness

24. I

25. L

26. A

27. U

28. G

29. H

30. Some Social Thinking Terminology • Expected and unexpected behaviors Following the rules (written and unwritten) is “expected” behavior. Behavior that doesn’t make social norms or rules is “unexpected” • Good thoughts and weird thoughts People have “good” thoughts about people when they have “expected” behaviors. People have “weird” thoughts about people who have ‘unexpected” behaviors • Smart guess and wacky guess A “smart” guess is an educated guess based on evidence and information. A “wacky” guess is one made when one doesn’t have enough or any information.

31. Tools for teaching social thinking Behavior Maps • Maps out an event • Identifies the problem • How the student tried to solve it • How well the solution worked • What effects the behavior had on others • What other solutions might there be that are both self smart and people smart

32. Problem: There is a field trip to the Great Escape and I have to ride the bus. I hate the bus.

33. Tools for teaching social thinking Behavior Maps • Maps out a topic/scenario • Lists the expected and unexpected behaviors in a situation • How those behaviors make others feel • The consequences of the effects of the behaviors • How those consequences feel • Helps individuals see the chain of events for the choices they make

34. Riding on a School Bus Adapted from: Winner, M.G.(2007). Social Behavior Mapping. Connecting Behavior, Emotions, and Consequences Across the Day. San Jose, CA: Michelle Garcia Winner.

35. Riding on a School Bus

36. Tools for teaching social thinking 5 Point Scales • Systems for visually representing more complex or abstract things, such as emotions, anxiety, and social acceptability. • How is Your Engine Running? • The Incredible 5 Point Scale • A 5 is Out of Control • A 5 is Against the Law • Can help students think about all the shades of grey between black and white thinking.

37. Ben’s Angry/Pissed off Scale From: Buron, K.D. & Curtis, M. (2003) The Incredible 5-Point Scale. Shawnee Mission, KS: Autism Asperger Publishing Co.

38. Tools for teaching social thinking Superflex/Be a Social Detective By Michelle Garcia Winner • A story based curriculum for school age children with social learning delays to learn to: • Think about other people’s behavior (be an OWL. Observe, wonder, learn) • Learn what behaviors are “expected” and “unexpected” • Learn about “good” thoughts and “uncomfortable” thoughts that people can have about other people’s behavior • Superflex includes a cast of “bad guys” who represent common roadblock to effective social communication.

39. Peer Intervention-NSR Established Treatment • Typically developing children are selected and trained to improve social interaction of children with autism. • May work with students one on one or in small groups in natural settings. • Peers may be better at redirecting children with autism as they are more natural role models and may be better accepted than adults.

40. Peer Intervention • The primary objective of including peers as intervention agents is to increase social participation in naturalistic settings without allowing the children to isolate themselves or rely on teachers for prompting. -Strain and Kohler, 1998. • Social and play skills are often the most challenging deficits in children with autism and seldom addressed in school based classrooms.

41. Peer Intervention • Peers should be carefully chosen. • (Phil Strain)- The potential peer should: • Possess appropriate self care skills • Have the ability to move through activities without direction • Possess on-task behavior minimum 90% of the time • Be older for cross developmental training. • Have a wide friendship network (they may already have the skills to interact with a variety of personalities). • Exceptions……

42. Interaction Concepts Teach the peer….. • how to gain attention from the child. • how to keep speech brief. • how to give directions and demonstrate skills to the child. • how to administer reinforcement. • how to re-direct. • the skills to handle rejection. - rehearse/roll play with the peer - “drill” the notion that if you are not successful to try again

43. More Interaction Concepts • Use gestural and visual prompts to avoid adult dependence • Allow children to be 1:1. Be the “ring leader” and organizer, not the translator • Use Shadow Prompting - stand behind the child and whisper the question/comment in the child’s ear - helpful intervention for echolalia with hopes that responses will generalize - only whisper the words you want the child to speak

44. Typical Steps of Interaction*Adapted from Simpson et. al (1997). SocialSkills for Students with Autism-2nd Edition 1. Peer establishes eye contact (e.g. say student’s name, touch shoulder, etc.). 2. Peer establishes a joint focus of attention (e.g. look at same toy). 3. Peer describes his or her own play and that of others. 4. Peer prompts requests (e.g. “Do you want the car? Say yes.”). 5. Acknowledges all forms of communication. 6. Expands and restate comments. 7. Requests clarification as needed. 8. Redirects play activity as needed.

45. Typical Steps of Interaction*Adapted from Simpson et. al (1997). SocialSkills for Students with Autism-2nd Edition Tips on Using • Teach peers to acknowledge and discuss the behaviors of student with autism to help increase awareness and understanding. • Encourage brief interaction initially and gradually expand. • Initially focus on activity rather than on the interaction to allow children to become familiar with one another. • Emphasize similarities among all students. • Teach peers how to obtain answers (e.g. using communication choice boards). • Teach socially competent peers to interact with student with autism and incorporate untrained peers into the activity. • Emphasize turn taking behaviors.

46. Benefits for Typical Peer • They develop more positive and accepting attitudes towards individuals with disabilities. • Develop stronger social skills. • Equal, if not greater developmental progress. • Have less disruptive/inappropriate behavior. • Viewed as more socially skillful by teachers and parents.

47. Social Stories-NSR Established Treatment • Developed by Carol Gray in 1991. • Assists students in learning the perspectives of the individuals they are interacting with and developing a greater social understanding. • A short description of a particular event or activity offering specific information on what to expect and why. • Offers students skills for reaction and/or interaction in varied social situations.

48. Social Stories • To develop self-care skills (e.g. how to clean teeth, wash hands or get dressed), social skills (e.g. sharing, asking for help, saying thank you, interrupting), sexuality, etc. • To assist an individual to cope with changes to routine, and unexpected or distressing events (e.g. absence of teacher, moving house, thunderstorms). • To provide positive feedback to an individual regarding an area of strength or achievement in order to develop self esteem. • As a behavioral strategy (e.g. what to do when angry, how to cope with obsessions).

49. How Are Social Stories Helpful to Individuals With ASD? • Information is presented in a literal, concrete and accurate manner, which may aide in the individual’s understanding of a previously difficult or ambiguous situation or activity. • The visual presentation of Social Stories utilizes the preference for visual processing experienced by many individuals with ASD.

50. How Are Social Stories Helpful to Individuals With ASD? Con’t • Provides information about what to expect in a particular situation and guidelines for the individuals own behavior in a format that is meaningful and relevant. Social Stories can increase structure in the individuals life and thereby reduce anxiety. • Assist with sequencing (i.e. what comes next in series of activities) and executive functioning (i.e. planning and organizing).