Audio overview: your child can pass the test and still not join the game

A free audio overview for families, derived from Special Learning's course "Social Skills Part 2: Elementary Social Skills Predictors of Future Success" (presented by Michele LaMarche, BCBA). It is a synthetic voice, not a person, summarizing one session of the course; it is not the session itself.

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Episode notes

• The article version of this overview: special-learning.com/blog/elementary-social-skills-passing-the-test/
• Free tools and guides, no account needed: special-learning.com/free-resources
• The ABCs of Autism guide, free and written for families: store.special-learning.com/free-abcs-of-autism.html
• The full session, and the rest of the series, is in Special Learning's Video CE Library, written for professionals: special-learning.com/for-behavior-analysts

Transcript

This is a free audio overview from Special Learning. It's a synthetic voice, not a person, and it's summarizing one session of a training course. It isn't the session itself.

The session is called "Social Skills Part Two: Elementary Social Skills." It's taught by Michele LaMarche, a board certified behavior analyst, and it's the second in a series about social skills. The first one was about toddlers and preschoolers. This one moves up the ladder, to the elementary years.

Here's the most honest thing in the whole session, and it comes early.

Social skills can be taught. The session is clear about that. But it's just as clear that there isn't much evidence of large improvements, or of a skill carrying over into new situations, unless that carry-over is trained on purpose. A skill that shows up at the kitchen table and disappears at the school gate isn't a failed skill. It's a skill nobody taught to travel.

The session makes a second point right beside it. A child can do a task correctly, on its own, and that doesn't prove they've grasped the idea behind it. There are many separate tasks that each stand for something like understanding other people's minds. Passing one of them isn't the same as having the whole thing. The research, the session says, hasn't settled how to tell the difference. So if a report says a skill is mastered, and you're watching your child stand alone at the edge of a birthday party, both can be true. One is a score. The other is the skill out in the world.

The session starts with a review of joint attention, the skill from part one. Two people sharing the same experience, and knowing they're sharing it. The session calls it the first skill to work on, and says the research is very clear that it shapes how a child communicates and interacts later. It usually develops between nine months and two years. For children with autism, the session says, it doesn't usually arrive without being taught, and it can take a long time. One place it's often taught is inside requesting. The child wants something, you're already sharing that moment, and the eye contact can be built into it.

Then the session moves to something bigger: understanding that other people have minds of their own. Beliefs, wants, feelings, intentions, and that theirs don't have to match yours. The session walks through a long list of pieces this is made of, and the ages they usually appear in typical development. Around three, seeing leads to knowing: if you saw where the ball went, you know where it is, and someone who wasn't in the room doesn't. Around four, understanding that two people can think different things about the same situation, and being able to shift, in the moment, to what the other person is probably thinking. Recognizing words like think, dream, pretend, and imagine, and then using them. Pretend play. Reading where someone is looking and guessing what they want. Understanding that an emotion can come from a situation, from a wish, or from a belief. Figurative language: jokes, sarcasm, idioms. Even deception.

On that last one, the session tells a small story. Parents sometimes arrive alarmed: he lied to me. The presenter's reaction is close to relief. Working out that you can put a different picture in someone else's head is one of the skills on this list. It means the processing is happening.

For children with autism, the session says the research finds difficulty across most of these, and the earliest age some of them appear is later than in typical development. The presenter is careful here. Having some of the tasks doesn't mean having the concept.

Then the session describes what people have tried, and it describes rather than recommends. That distinction matters, so here it is out loud: nothing that follows is a recommendation for any particular child.

One training program ran fifty-three sessions, building from the basics, like listening and imitation, up through pretend versus real, then the first-order skills, then the harder second-order ones. It worked better at producing understanding of the ideas than at producing use of them in daily life. The session's own comment is that this won't surprise anyone who does this work. Knowing it isn't using it.

Another study compared two ways of teaching. One taught children to think of thoughts as pictures in your head: pictures that can stay after the thing is gone, can differ from person to person, and can be out of date. The other taught the brain as a machine with tools you switch between. The picture approach helped children pass the perspective tasks. The tool approach didn't move the skill it was aimed at, but, interestingly, it also helped with perspective. The presenter says the field hasn't settled which to teach first, and that in her own practice they teach both alongside each other.

Video modeling comes up twice. In one study, children watched adults answering perspective questions correctly, reviewed the answers with an instructor, and were then tested. They learned some perspective taking, and because the training used many different examples, the skill carried over. That detail is the point. The transfer came from variety, not from more repetitions of one example.

Pretend play gets its own section. Using a banana as a telephone, a box as a house. The session describes a study where children were taught symbolic play with their own favorite toys, and where the play grew more complex and reached the level of their peers. Teaching language afterward, in that study, didn't add to the play.

There's a study using an animated series of vehicles with real human faces, watched at home with a parent for four weeks, that improved emotion recognition. And there's the one the presenter calls incredibly fun to read: children building with plastic bricks in threes, one the engineer, one the supplier, one the builder, swapping roles. Compared with a curriculum-based language program, both reduced difficulties, and the brick-building group spent longer in social interaction with peers. The presenter notes it ran only a few short sessions a week, and that in her reading it held up better over time than an adult shadowing a child and prompting from behind. She recommends reading the paper.

Two smaller ideas, from near the end. Recognizing a feeling is not the same as knowing what to do about it. And one short story-based strategy, read just before recess or lunch, asked children to stop, observe, deliberate, and act. The children kept using it after the program ended, and a year later could still describe it.

The session is honest about who most of these studies included. Several were run only with children who had strong language and higher cognitive scores, and the presenter says plainly that a child with little language will usually need to start with smaller, more concrete steps, and that the foundations from part one still come first.

A note on language. The session uses some diagnostic terms that were current when it was recorded and have since changed. This overview leaves them out. The ideas don't depend on them. And while schools and services differ by country, the gap between a taught skill and a used one is not about any country. It's about children.

This is general information for families, not clinical advice, and not a treatment recommendation for any individual child.

If you want something to use today rather than something to buy, Special Learning's free tools and guides are at special-learning.com/free-resources, no account needed.

The full session, and the rest of the series, is in Special Learning's Video CE Library; the link is in the episode notes.

This has been a free audio overview from Special Learning.