can social skills be taught?

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

IntenseWorld over 12 years ago

NAS11521 said:
I can confirm some of your observations Darcy, from my own experience, but we probably need a few more respondents with shared insights. I was hoping for more people querying whether you can be taught social skills, whereas most responses think it possible; or at the present rate I'll be on my own on this!
Longman, recognition that females can be on the spectrum is comparatively recent, the reason being that we are much better at learning to acquire social skills than males.
My partner is undiagnosed but shows all the signs of having AS. He is extremely intelligent but he's never learned many of the social skills. He cannot see when he is boring people although I can tell from the glazed look in their eyes. If I say to him later that he did go on rather too long he will indignantly reply that they were really interested in what he was saying. When he was younger if he was attracted to a girl he would persist when it was obvious she wasn't interested. Equally, if HE wasn't interested it never entered his head that someone fancied him.[/quote]
This varies even amongst females. I have been very guilty of not knowing when people were bored when listening to me, even outright yawning didn't give me a hint. There are many ways in which I either take the wrong message from someone's body language, tone of voice or don't pick it up at all.
What I think is different with females, is that our social role is typically much more communicator so we are more exposed to the social norms and we are often better at mimicking. It doesn't come any more naturally to us than males with ASC and we can be prone to all the same social mistakes. I think some females may get luckier with perhaps a protective friend(s) who mother them and teach them, or it just gets really drummed in because of social expectations, but that doesn't go for all.
Some females don't have helpful friends, a supportive family or are loners so they stay stagnant at the same level as a male would. I do think most of it is environment-dependent.
Other times, if a female is very good verbally and very fast cognitively, she can disguise a certain level of lack of social awareness, it doesn't mean it's not there though.

Reply

IntenseWorld over 12 years ago

NAS11521 said:
I can confirm some of your observations Darcy, from my own experience, but we probably need a few more respondents with shared insights. I was hoping for more people querying whether you can be taught social skills, whereas most responses think it possible; or at the present rate I'll be on my own on this!
Longman, recognition that females can be on the spectrum is comparatively recent, the reason being that we are much better at learning to acquire social skills than males.
My partner is undiagnosed but shows all the signs of having AS. He is extremely intelligent but he's never learned many of the social skills. He cannot see when he is boring people although I can tell from the glazed look in their eyes. If I say to him later that he did go on rather too long he will indignantly reply that they were really interested in what he was saying. When he was younger if he was attracted to a girl he would persist when it was obvious she wasn't interested. Equally, if HE wasn't interested it never entered his head that someone fancied him.[/quote]
This varies even amongst females. I have been very guilty of not knowing when people were bored when listening to me, even outright yawning didn't give me a hint. There are many ways in which I either take the wrong message from someone's body language, tone of voice or don't pick it up at all.
What I think is different with females, is that our social role is typically much more communicator so we are more exposed to the social norms and we are often better at mimicking. It doesn't come any more naturally to us than males with ASC and we can be prone to all the same social mistakes. I think some females may get luckier with perhaps a protective friend(s) who mother them and teach them, or it just gets really drummed in because of social expectations, but that doesn't go for all.
Some females don't have helpful friends, a supportive family or are loners so they stay stagnant at the same level as a male would. I do think most of it is environment-dependent.
Other times, if a female is very good verbally and very fast cognitively, she can disguise a certain level of lack of social awareness, it doesn't mean it's not there though.

Children

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