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can social skills be taught?

longman

I keep coming across claims that people with Asperger's Syndrome or HFASD can be taught or shown how to overcome social/communication difficulties. 

This seems to be what underpins help given to people on the spectrum in special schools or learning disability support in mainstream. Or all these consultants who offer training in social skills to school age children (for a fee) because what they achieve by a long arduous process that sorts socialising at school will somehow magically resolve socialising as an adult in an adult world.

It also seems to underlie the assumption that you grow out of it. Hence transition isn't a big issue for abler children who will magicly transform into social butterflies by 18 or 21.

Which is again why so little has been done to better understand the needs of adults. Adults with socialising problems it seems were children who didn't learn their social skills lessons at school and are now paying the price for their indolence and ingratitude. Once "taught" how to conquer social interaction its all your fault if you don't magically get over the rest.

I just wonder what research underpins the confidence that this kind of social coaching in school years has any long term value. Because surely for all the claims made, there has to be evidence. If this was medication or cosmetics there would have to be a substantial body of evidence. Where is the substantial body of evidence that people on the spectrum can be taught social skills for life?

I personally, at the abler end, without a diagnosis (as diagnosed late in life) found ways round formal social interaction by finding out why I got into trouble, finding people who were understanding enough to help me, and then learning the right things to say on cue, which took me decades. But it is still hard work and I still make mistakes.

Even so I still lose credibility if there's background noise, where I lose coherence, or there are two many cross-overs in the dialogue, or I'm unwell or flagging, or I blank out.

And that's only with formal conversation. As it gets less formal, less language based more gestures, nods and inflexions based I lose out rapidly. OK I was self-taught, maybe if I had been "coached" when younger I might have been better at it. But I cannot find published evidence that "coaching" of social skills works long term. It might produce short term benefits for young people in their immediate social contexts, but the root causes haven't been resolved, and there needs to be research that substantiates claims it works long term.

As I have already said, if this was medication or cosmetics there would have to be a substantial body of proof. I don't see why autistic spectrum "cures" don't seem to need a body of proof. At the moment there's just a lot of uncorroborated quackery going on.

I do feel NAS has a duty to pursue (or at least demand) scientific evidence for autism "cures".

No-one should be permitted to claim they can coach social skills unless they can provide proof of long term benefit, into adulthood. The impression that someone can be egged on to manage in a few short-lived social settings is not scientific corroboration of efficacy.

I just think it is time we had some science to this, and science we could see.

Parents

  • yes, i keep forgetting other difficulties i encounter, then i remember them when i read them from others. i have been sun shy since i remember due to sensitive eyes. i cannot understand how people walk on the street on a sunny summer day and not shielding their eyes. i wear the glasses that darken in the presence of the uv light and even that does not help so the baseball hat does the job for me. i enjoy taking tan and after some time i get used to the light intensity, but in general i suffer on sun. i also have autoimmune disease that regularly affects my iris causing very painful inflammation that needs to be treated with corticosteroids. can this be linked? i dont know. but i have been light sensitive much earlier than i got these attacks. 

    the phobia on the street you have described that makes you to walk by the walls is not present in me although recently i had recurring spells of dizziness, several times per day, some even one after another within 10 seconds as i walked on oxford street. this happened whether walking or even sitting in front of my computer. it went as it came after few weeks. but i managed to climb snowdon the hard way (via crib goch) with this in july, so i am proud, although i was swearing when i was up there, scared and angry that my friend got me into that situation. my blood pressure is normal and blood glucose either. so i have no explanation except of a suspicion that my immunity may be attacking some centres in the brain or in my ear for balance, similarly as it does in people with type 1 diabetes, that it completely destroys the beta cells producing insulin in their pancreas. the body is a whole universe, too complicated and interconnected, so fascinating - when the diseases happen to somebody else... otherwise it is just a nuisance or even a tragedy. 

    i wonder whether other phobias or similar stuff (standing by the wall on the street) is not just a  manifestation of some combined disorders, such as agoraphobia or something like that? could some of these emotional things be treated with hypnosis, for example? but i do not expect that some other traits that occur in autists can be cured this way, such as not being able to read peoples non-verbal signals. this is probably too complex brain activity than just emotions, which could be re-programmed with the right approach. just hypothesizing... 

Reply

  • yes, i keep forgetting other difficulties i encounter, then i remember them when i read them from others. i have been sun shy since i remember due to sensitive eyes. i cannot understand how people walk on the street on a sunny summer day and not shielding their eyes. i wear the glasses that darken in the presence of the uv light and even that does not help so the baseball hat does the job for me. i enjoy taking tan and after some time i get used to the light intensity, but in general i suffer on sun. i also have autoimmune disease that regularly affects my iris causing very painful inflammation that needs to be treated with corticosteroids. can this be linked? i dont know. but i have been light sensitive much earlier than i got these attacks. 

    the phobia on the street you have described that makes you to walk by the walls is not present in me although recently i had recurring spells of dizziness, several times per day, some even one after another within 10 seconds as i walked on oxford street. this happened whether walking or even sitting in front of my computer. it went as it came after few weeks. but i managed to climb snowdon the hard way (via crib goch) with this in july, so i am proud, although i was swearing when i was up there, scared and angry that my friend got me into that situation. my blood pressure is normal and blood glucose either. so i have no explanation except of a suspicion that my immunity may be attacking some centres in the brain or in my ear for balance, similarly as it does in people with type 1 diabetes, that it completely destroys the beta cells producing insulin in their pancreas. the body is a whole universe, too complicated and interconnected, so fascinating - when the diseases happen to somebody else... otherwise it is just a nuisance or even a tragedy. 

    i wonder whether other phobias or similar stuff (standing by the wall on the street) is not just a  manifestation of some combined disorders, such as agoraphobia or something like that? could some of these emotional things be treated with hypnosis, for example? but i do not expect that some other traits that occur in autists can be cured this way, such as not being able to read peoples non-verbal signals. this is probably too complex brain activity than just emotions, which could be re-programmed with the right approach. just hypothesizing... 

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