Module 3 Social Thinking

This document discusses social thinking and communication skills. It notes that social skills involve imagination and interpreting others' perspectives. It outlines four steps to effective social communication: 1) thinking about others' thoughts and feelings, 2) having an attentive physical presence, 3) using eye contact to gauge others' feelings, and 4) using words that relate to the conversation. Finally, it emphasizes that communication requires managing multiple systems simultaneously, including mind, body, eyes, and language, not just words alone. Teaching students to communicate using their whole bodies can help improve their social skills.

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Module 3 Social Thinking

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All About Social Thinking

Adrienne - EDU 4306

What to Know
● Social skills are not memorized.
● Social thinking has as a lot to do with our imagination.
● It is our meaning maker!
● We use social skills to find power in understanding how they are
interpreting us and adapting our behavior so they interpret, think, and
feel about us the way we want.
● Without our ability to interpret and imagine other peoples experiences we
have trouble with reasoning skills and problem solving skills.
● Early on in childhood development, most individuals learn to coordinate
their own body and mind, as well as interpret the words and actions of
others to participate with increasing sophistication in the act of
communication.Yet these same skills don't develop intuitively for our
students with social learning challenges, and we therefore step in to
teach them to communicate.
The Steps
1. Think about other people's thoughts and feelings as well as
your own
a. Take the perspective(s) of your communicative partner
2. Establish physical presence; enter with your body attuned to
the group
a. Stand about an arm's length of each other (physical proximity)
b. Have a physical stance/posture that conveys emotional calm and willingness
to participate
3. Think with your eyes
a. “Think with your eyes” - meaning, to use your eyes enough to monitor how
people are feeling and what they may be thinking
4. Use your words to relate to others
a. Ask questions, add a thought, show interest,
based on the conversation at hand
Communication
● A key in teaching students to be increasingly effective
communicators is to teach them to manage multiple systems at
once: mind, body, eyes and language.
● While words are important, they do not trump all other aspects
of communication. They have to be melded into a set of
movements and thoughts that make up “communication.”
● Executive function (EF) means "multi-tasking", and while many
think of EF skills as only referring to organizational tasks,
our EF skills are in strong demand during communication.
● The take-home message is this: Communication is more than
words. Let's move our students away from the therapy table and
teach them to communicate using their whole bodies.