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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

  • I think there's a distinction to be made though between learning social communication as an actor would, and being naturally attuned to it.

    An actor knows his/her lines, by memorising them, and moves according to stage directions. They speak on a pre-determined cue. They aren't having a real conversation, as everyone already knows which bits of dialogue follow. And they know how to pitch a line, whether to be angry or happy, from learning a script.

    You can learn to go through the motions of social engagement: - what sort of things you are supposed to say in response to certain cues, when to listen, when to prompt someone else for their opinion. Its about rules, a bit like chess, but learnable.

    However you are not really doing it. Primarily, most people on the spectrum aren't paying proper attention. If they are not averting their gaze they are looking at people's mouths, or other points than the eyes, or defocussing or looking beyond. Consequently they are missing out on a lot of social cues, including those which for on-line chat requires emoticons to get the same effect. Also they are not generating the required looks, giving the wrong facial expression or gestures to fit their dialogue, smiling when the shouldn't, looking serious when a smile is crucial etc.

    Learning how to act these things out, and how to anticipate isn't real social dialogue, because you are still socially blind. If you predict the situation wrongly, people around you will be puzzled.

    Also the concentration needed is tiring, and after a time the act wears thin.

    The do-gooder efforts to get kids on the spectrum to be more effective socially overlook the fact that not being able to visually interface properly - both reading and generating cues and inflexions, is not something that can be learned. Its fundamental to the disability.

    Also as the Work Capability interviews quickly revealed, the professionals seem to have been unaware that adults still have poor eye contact, because even if they don't still avert their eyes, they don't use their eyes properly.

    Interesting too that blind people can compensate to some extent by being more sharply receptive to voice inflexion changes. Also people make allowances for a blind person. The difficulties in visual interfacing for someone on the spectrum are less obvious, and also there seems to be no compensatory recognition of voice inflexion.

    A whole raft of measures to help young people overcome social difficulties have overlooked the fact that people on the spectrum rely overmuch on the spoken word as language, and lose a great deal of the other contributing gestures, visual cues and voice inflexions.

Reply

  • I think there's a distinction to be made though between learning social communication as an actor would, and being naturally attuned to it.

    An actor knows his/her lines, by memorising them, and moves according to stage directions. They speak on a pre-determined cue. They aren't having a real conversation, as everyone already knows which bits of dialogue follow. And they know how to pitch a line, whether to be angry or happy, from learning a script.

    You can learn to go through the motions of social engagement: - what sort of things you are supposed to say in response to certain cues, when to listen, when to prompt someone else for their opinion. Its about rules, a bit like chess, but learnable.

    However you are not really doing it. Primarily, most people on the spectrum aren't paying proper attention. If they are not averting their gaze they are looking at people's mouths, or other points than the eyes, or defocussing or looking beyond. Consequently they are missing out on a lot of social cues, including those which for on-line chat requires emoticons to get the same effect. Also they are not generating the required looks, giving the wrong facial expression or gestures to fit their dialogue, smiling when the shouldn't, looking serious when a smile is crucial etc.

    Learning how to act these things out, and how to anticipate isn't real social dialogue, because you are still socially blind. If you predict the situation wrongly, people around you will be puzzled.

    Also the concentration needed is tiring, and after a time the act wears thin.

    The do-gooder efforts to get kids on the spectrum to be more effective socially overlook the fact that not being able to visually interface properly - both reading and generating cues and inflexions, is not something that can be learned. Its fundamental to the disability.

    Also as the Work Capability interviews quickly revealed, the professionals seem to have been unaware that adults still have poor eye contact, because even if they don't still avert their eyes, they don't use their eyes properly.

    Interesting too that blind people can compensate to some extent by being more sharply receptive to voice inflexion changes. Also people make allowances for a blind person. The difficulties in visual interfacing for someone on the spectrum are less obvious, and also there seems to be no compensatory recognition of voice inflexion.

    A whole raft of measures to help young people overcome social difficulties have overlooked the fact that people on the spectrum rely overmuch on the spoken word as language, and lose a great deal of the other contributing gestures, visual cues and voice inflexions.

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