Social skills enhancement or training is a cognitive problem solving approach, allowing the use of a structured, but flexible, behaviour modification program to overcome weaknesses in a child’s social skill development. It involves many of the same stages as construction of a behavioural modification program, but with a specific goal of increasing skill useful for social interaction in the future.

Social Skills and Competence

A child’s ability to develop and maintain appropriate peer relationships (with such as family, friends, and adults of authority), is recognised as an important influence for future appropriate adult behaviour. This is because the establishment of relationships is a vital social skill in both a child’s and an adults life. Social skills are defined as specific strategies used by an individual to perform social tasks effectively and thus be judged socially competent. They can be split into two categories;

Environmental Social Skills

These are skills that are essential to perform tasks in both an educational setting and the work place, such as listening, following instructions, appropriate work habits etc.

Social Interaction Skills

These are skills that facilitate any positive social interaction, such as starting and maintaining a conversation, complementing others, resolving conflict etc.

Failure to develop social competence can be due to several reasons. Cox and Gun (1980) believe that children lack social competence due to either;

• the child does not possess a suitable repertoire of appropriate behavioural responses.
• the child does possess a repertoire of behaviour, but has not had sufficient opportunity to practise and develop competency.
• the child has emotional problems which interfere with effective problem solving and social interaction.

It is recognised that children with emotional and behavioural difficulties have a greater difficulty in both developing appropriate social interaction skills, and generalising those skills to other situations.

A reason for this is the behavioural symptoms the EBD child displays to other children and peer groups. These symptoms manifest in several different ways:

• physically (such as hyperactivity, violent out-bursts)
• verbally (such as shouting or swearing)
• emotionally (such as crying continuously or being withdrawn).

All these symptoms can socially ostracise the child during their development. This is unfortunate as these children’s EBD problems make them especially vulnerable to rejection, thus compounding the problem and creating a downward spiral, as the child avoids future disappointment from social learning situations and thus retarding even more the child’s social skill acquisition for future life. A vicious circle is established.

One example would be the child who at an early age is withdrawn and does not play with other children willingly. In the future the child can only relate to others through aggression or threats of violence. This child will never develop skills in making friends, having a civil conversation, constructing an argument to win a disagreement. In fact they could well grow up to be an adult who has few (if any) friends, and who answers all arguments with their fists.

There are three parts to effect training in an specific social skills children may fall short in. These three parts are Assessment, Skills Program Construction/Selection and Feedback/Evaluation.

Assessment

This is a two fold process.

• The first step is identifying the child who is judged socially incompetent and lacking in skills, this is usually accomplished via the child’s class teacher or a professional involved with the child (e.g. an educational psychologist).
• The second step is more formal and involves identifying the areas of skill weaknesses the child has, in order to target specific areas for the future skill program to concentrate on. It is entirely possible that a child with EBD has already undergone some form of assessment for their social skills competence, and thus can be spared from re-assessment. However if this is not the cases there are several commercially available assessments which can be specifically targeted at a particular age group or disorder (e.g. adolescents or ADHD sufferers) and can range in complexity from 60 item down to only 12 item scales. The manner of completion can be either teacher, parent, both, or for the simpler test self-completion via the child (not particularly accurate or reliable). For an example here is a 23 item pre and post Social Skills Group Assessment Questionnaire developed by Goldstein & Pollock (1988) for use with ADD and ADHD children’s social skills training. It is a quick and easy to complete tool.

Simply teaching a specific social response appropriate in a specific situation is not the true goal of social skills training. The child must also learn to be flexible and organised in applying the skill in the correctly judged situation. A good skills program should included the following features; built-in examples of generalisation of skills to the child’ environment, provision of internal, as well as external controls over the consequences of the child’s actions, and it should follow the child over an extended period of time.

There are many commercially available skill programs, however to teach a single social skill a simple five stage, cognitive problem solving model can be followed:

(i) Helping the child to develop sensitivity and awareness for their problem area. Often the child’s and the adults definition of the problem vary greatly.

Example- the child who never finishes their work in class, the child’s explanation of the problem may be “I didn’t have enough time”, while the teachers explanation may be “You didn’t make good use of your time”.

The teacher or parent must work with the child to help them compromise their perception, and except a definition of the problem where the child recognises they are responsible. With out this first step being correctly accomplished the next four step will be completely ineffective.

(ii) The next stage is generation of solutions to the child’s problem. A comprehensive list of alternatives should be drawn up buy both the child and adult working in co-operation. This can be accomplished by a written list on either paper or blackboard. However the adult should avoid lecturing the child and construct all the solutions, as this will sub-tract from the child’s motivation to learn the suggested solutions.

(iii &iv) “means-ends thinking”, is the third stage. This involves taking the child step by step through the most applicable solution, selected from the list generated in stage two. This could be as simple as answering another person when asked a question, or starting a piece of work early enough to be completed on time. Once agreed upon, the solution is broken down by the child with the help of the adult, into specific step to be implemented. Often this process will evolve the use of stage four, “consequential thinking” , focusing the child’s attention on the consequences of their actions. In the example of the child completing their work on time, a listing by child and adult would be made of exactly how much time should be allocated to each stage of the child’s task, with the adult reminding the child when every they reach one of these stages.

(v) The final stage is an attempt to develop the child’s “sense of causality”. This is accomplished by linking this particular problem and event with other past events and potential future problems. Once a solution for the particular problem has been selected and implemented, the adult should encourage the child to apply the solution to other problems they may be having. The adult help the child visualise the impact of this solution on the child’s relationships with others in the future. For example the child who never completes their work on time, when they complete their work on time will not be rebuked by either parents, teachers or other children for being lazy, etc. If this child applied the same time allocation skill to all their future task management problems, they may suddenly find that they a receiving more positive praise and recognition that negative.

An example of this approach in practice, is Goldstein & Pollock (1988) Social Skills Training Program to improve social skills in children with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder. This incorporates their Group Skills Assessment Questionnaire for assessment and evaluation (at beginning and end), and is implemented once a week over 6 half hour lessons. Each lesson was divided into four parts. During the first part, homework is reviewed and skills taught from the previous week are briefly demonstrated. During the second part each new skill is broken down into a step-by-step model for acquiring the skill. The third part involves role play and practice of the new skill and the fourth part is the allocation of homework based on the skill, for the next lesson.

For best results a small group is suggested, of three to six children. More than six children with EBD problems can be too disruptive to control, and become counter productive. Less than three children, and the setting lacks sufficient social interaction.

Positive reinforcements were used intermittently, in this case a token reinforcement system. When ever the participants displayed desired social behaviour (e.g. sitting still and working) or demonstrated the social skill being taught (e.g. apologising for being rude), a reinforcement token was given which could be exchange then or latter for desired activities or material rewards.

Feedback/Evaluation

The simplest manner to judge success of the program upon completion is to repeat the assessment exercise conducted at the being of the training program, and compare the result for nay significant improvement. In there is not obvious improvement, the program has not necessary been unsuccessful. Skills learn may not be immediately used or generalised in to the child’s social environment. Some children may learn the required skills, but still require behavioural props (reinforcers) or additional intervention for them to become an established response over time.

If you wish to use a professionally constructed Social Skills Program, here is a list of some of those commercially available.

“Adolescent Curriculum for Communication and Effective Social Skills (ACCESS)”, by Walker, Todis & Horton, (1988).

“A Social Skills Program for Adolescents (ASSET)”, by Hazel, Bragg, Schumaker, Sherman & Sheldon-Wildgen (1981).

“Skill-Streaming the Elementary School Child”, by McGinnis, Goldstein, Sparfkin & Gershaw (1984).

“Skill-Streaming the Adolescent”, by Goldstein, Sparfkin, Gershaw & Klein (1980).

“Think Aloud: Increasing Social and Cognitive Skills”, A Problem- Solving program for Children, by Bash & Camp (1985).

“Getting Along with Others: Teaching Social Effectiveness to Children”, by Jackson & Monroe (1983).

“The Prepare Curriculum: Teaching Pro-Social Competencies”, by Goldstein (1988).

“Activities for Social Development”, by Elardo & Cooper (1977).