Empowering Social Skills: Tailored Approaches for Autism

Understanding and addressing social communication difficulties is crucial for autistic individuals. This article explores some personalised strategies to enhance social skills without causing undue stress or effort. This allows them to be themselves.

Introduction

Social and communication difficulties play a big part in the diagnosis of autism, in fact without them you would not be able to get a diagnosis as these difficulties form key parts of the diagnostic criteria.

Standard social skills training, which generally includes teaching autistic people facial expression and body language along with social rules and social stories has become controversial as it has attracted accusations of those trying to help autistic people trying to make them no autistic - something that is not actually possible.

However, the accusations do raise a few issues:

1. There are many different kinds of autism and teaching social skills via a one size fits all approach tends to be of limited benefit. There are autistic people who have been through years of ‘social skills training’ for whom it has had very little impact.
2. Teaching social rules can be very frustrating for an autistic person as they observe other people often breaking the rules with no consequences.
3. Many autistic people put a lot of effort into learning the rules of social interaction so that they can fit in and connect with those they perceive as ‘neurotypical’. This often leads to burn out.
4. Some autistic people create a persona, which engages with people after a fashion. But as the persona is very challenging, it often leads to them being perceived a weird anyway and can, especially for young women, lead to being sexually exploited. This approach is very harmful in the long run.

Is is actually possible to improve the social skills of an autistic adult or child, in a way that does not try to change or undermine who they are, and most importantly does not cause additional stress, anxiety, or a large amount of effort?

Aspiedent strongly believes that this is possible, but that you have to tailor the training to the individual. Therefore the first step is to establish what the barriers to social interaction and communication are for that particular individual. Below, we discuss key barriers that cause difficulties with social interaction and communication and provide an indication as to what to do about them.

Processing Issues

If someone is struggling to process what someone is saying to them and is not getting beyond the literal meaning, there is no point adding to the processing load by expecting them to also process facial expression and body language, for example. Instead, simple strategies should be taught to help the person get by in different situations. Teaching strategies for staying safe around strangers, but avoid a blanket rule of never speaking to strangers because this will include not speaking to key workers and professionals who might be able to help.

Emotion

Many autistic people sense emotion directly. If this is the case, then it is a waste of time teaching them to know how someone is feeling via facial expression and body language. Direct sensing is often more reliable. Instead, teach them about emotion and help them to label both their own emotions and those of others. However, note that if processing issues are present, the person may not be able to process emotion at the time. Or they might be able to process their emotion or the emotion of someone else but not both at the same time.

If someone is over-sensitive to the emotion part of social interaction, this will make social interaction overwhelming and the person will be reluctant to talk to people they don’t know. Ideally new people should be introduced gradually, or if integrating the person into a group, acceptance and no pressure to participate until they have had time to get to know people is important. One to one interaction initially will be easier than group interaction and it will help if one or two people in the group are already known.

Social Emotional Reciprocity

During social interaction, people exchange packets of emotion. It is this that makes social interaction so enjoyable for most people. Social interaction isn’t about the content of the conversation but about building connection through exchange of emotion. Some autistic people are able to do this and some cannot engage in social emotional reciprocity. This has nothing to do with processing issues. Even some people very severe processing issues can engage in social emotional reciprocity. The presence or lack of this ability is key for teaching social interaction.

If the autistic person has this ability then they will want to engage socially with people and will be desperate to connect with other people. In this case, you should teach about people. This can be done by study how different people with different characters react in different situations. Ensure this has not been rote learned and there is an assumption that everyone is the same and reacts in the same way. If the person enjoys it, then role play can be useful. If the person is poor at problem solving, then teaching problem solving skills can be useful. Because of the severity of the autism, it may be possible to achieve only a modest improvement. However, even improving the ability to hold a conversation and enhance relationships with family members, can significantly improve well-being.

It is this ability to do social emotional reciprocity that can lead to autistic people putting loads of effort into mimicking ‘neurotypicals’ in an attempt to not appear weird or strange and therefore be accepted by peers. There are two significant problems with approach: it is exhausting and it means not being yourself. This is not healthy. Additionally, there is a risk of all this effort being wasted if the ‘neurotypical’ act isn’t quite right. Not getting the ‘neurotypical act’ exactly right can lead to falling into the ‘Uncanny Valley’. When this happens, the person is perceived as weird and creepy, leading to rejection. We have witnessed this happening to a few autistic people. The solution is to aim to come across as eccentric instead. In these cases, there can be a fear that not putting so much effort in will lead to greater rejection and lack of acceptance.

When the ability to do social emotional reciprocity is there, but there are also severe processing difficulties sometimes there is a tactic to engage in monologues that peers will appreciate. These monologues can show a sophisticated understanding of social interaction. There are other forms of autism, where people fully understand social interaction but cannot engage in it. Ido Kedar and Naoki Higashida are examples of this.

If the autistic person does not have this ability then they will find social chit chat pointless and boring. They will prefer to build relationships with people via shared interests and doing things together. They will likely come across as cold until you get to know them and realise that they do care. In this case, just explain why people find social interaction so enjoyable and teach the basics of social interaction. Things like greetings, having an open posture, and being careful to ask people about themselves, while working to remember some key information that can be asked next time.

Strong Interest

If the person has a strong interest that they love to talk about, it is very likely that they can’t do social emotional reciprocity and that they have significant difficulties processing what people are saying. By sticking to a well known and understood topic, the person can provide themselves with the best chance of being able to follow a conversation. Because other people tend not to know anything like as much about the topic, their role becomes that of information giver which reduces the amount of incoming information that has to be processed.

In this case, it is important to recognise the severe barriers to social interaction and to accept the person as they are. You never know, but by listening and asking questions, you might find out why this topic is so interesting and cultivate an interest yourself. By listening, you show and interest and by being patient you could coax them into talking about more risky topics. The most important thing to do is to accept and not exclude. Just being around people and being accepted is extremely important.

Conclusion

The above are just some barriers that cause difficulties with learning social interaction for autistic people. Another common barrier is how someone thinks. It is important to take how the individual thinks and learns into account when teaching social interaction. For example, if someone has strong pattern recognition, then point out the patterns in different social and communication scenarios.

The best way to identify the specific barriers to social interaction and communication for an individual is via an integrative cognitive profile. This will pinpoint barriers and their interactions, and allow tailored guidelines for improving communication and social interaction. Alternatively, we offer online social skills and communication workshops for autistic adults who can identify their barriers from having all the different barriers explained and who are able to devise their own strategies with some help. With sufficient interest we can adapt these sessions for older children (15-18).