Social Skills of Children and Adolescents

Conceptualization, Assessment, Treatment

Kenneth W. Merrell, Gretchen Gimpel

• Publisher: Psychology Press
• Year: 2014
• ISBN:
  9781317778486
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Psychology
• Subtopic: History & Theory in Psychology
• Index: Psychology

This scholarly yet highly readable and practical text systematically covers the importance, development, assessment, and treatment of social skills of children and adolescents. Combining scientific rigor with a highly approachable and readable style of writing to create a practical and unique book, this volume provides a comprehensive overview of the increasingly important topic of child and adolescent social skills. A wide variety of tables, figures, and practical step-by-step guides enhance the material presented, making it particularly useful for practitioners while offering an extensive array of recent research and models of interest to researchers. The authors present a solid foundation of scientific knowledge written in a manner accessible to nonscientists and having ample practical implications and examples for educational and clinical practice. The book is divided into two parts--the first features a foundation for conceptualizing and assessing child and adolescent social skills, whereas the second focuses on the arena of intervention. An up-to-date and unique addition to the literature, this volume will be of interest to professionals who work with or study children across several disciplines including school and clinical child psychology, special education, counseling, and social work. Although many books and other professional materials on the social competence of children and adolescents are presently available, the knowledge regarding these social skills is expanding rapidly, and there is a tremendous need to keep it current. This book helps meet this need by not only synthesizing a great deal of recent work in the field, but also by providing new information and evidence that has not yet been published. It also bridges an important gap that sometimes exists between research and practice. For instance, some books on child and adolescent social skills are clearly written for the academician or researcher, and may have little apparent application for the clinician or practitioner. Other materials are written as practical assessment or intervention guides for the clinician/practitioner, yet sometimes lack supporting evidence and rationale. This book is aimed at both arenas.

ONE


The Nature and Value of Social Skills

BRANDON, SARAH, AND CASEY: AN INTRODUCTION

Brandon, a 7-year-old boy in the first grade, was referred to the school child study team. Brandon's teacher reported that he had extreme difficulty getting along with peers and that he was often physically aggressive. The first author of this book, a member of the team, was asked to observe Brandon in the classroom and on the playground. The classroom observation took place during an academic activity in which the students were writing spelling words from the chalkboard onto their papers. Brandon quickly lost interest in the activity and tried to get the attention of a student sitting behind him. Cupping his hands to his mouth and making a strange face, Brandon repeatedly whispered “hey you!” to his neighbor. When this ploy failed to get the attention of the other student, Brandon poked him in the shoulder with a sharpened pencil, which resulted in a loud cry of “stop it!” and a warning from the teacher. The playground observation took place during morning recess on a very frigid January day. Most of the 60 or so students simply stood near the building, huddled with their hands in their pockets. Brandon and about 10 others elected to play on the jungle gym and tunnel slide. During the 10-minute observation period, it was noted that Brandon engaged in 24 different acts of physical aggression (hitting, shoving, kicking, and the like) while continually making verbal threats or insults to his peers. Within a few weeks, a full-blown special education eligibility assessment was in process. During an interview and testing session when Brandon was asked how he got along with other kids, he became stoic, appeared to hold back tears, and tersely stated, “They all hate me.”

Sarah, a 10-year-old girl in the fourth grade, had been a primary concern of her homeroom teacher for most of the school year. A classic wallflower, Sarah was always on the sidelines of social activity and was described by her teachers during lunchroom discussions as being painfully shy. She seldom initiated any social interactions, and although she was never in trouble for inappropriate or antisocial behavior, she appeared to have no close friends. During the spring parent-teacher conferences, Sarah's teacher discussed her concerns with Sarah's mother, who looked as reserved and quiet as Sarah. Stating that this was Sarah's typical mode of behavior, her mother noted that Sarah had few friends, and usually became involved in solitary play activities at home, even though she seemed to want friends desperately. A few sessions with the school counselor were recommended and, with some initial hesitation, Sarah cooperated. During the third session, Sarah stated that the prospect of approaching children or initiating a conversation often resulted in such thoughts as “I don't know how to do this and I'm going to look like an idiot!”

Casey, a 16-year-old boy in the tenth grade, was referred to a clinical psychologist for treatment of depression after admission to a hospital emergency room for an unsuccessful suicide attempt. (He became unconscious after he drank several glasses of wine and took a number of his mother's tranquilizers.) During the course of treatment, some facts about Casey emerged. He had been depressed for nearly 4 months, and the depression appeared to be precipitated by two events: the death of his grandfather and failure to make the junior varsity basketball team. The course of treatment focused on two primary areas: getting Casey involved in positive or enjoyable activities again and helping him to change the way he was thinking about things. Casey reported that he seldom did things with friends anymore and that when he was around people, he often avoided conversation and usually failed to make eye contact in his reply when spoken to.

These three cases appear to have little in common, but they share a collective thread: Brandon, Sarah, and Casey all exhibited deficits in basic social skills, and as a result they all are suffering. These cases also serve as a starting point for this introductory chapter aimed at providing a basic definition and understanding of social skills, showing why they are important, and explaining how their presence, absence, or adequacy during childhood and adolescence may have powerful and far-reaching implications, not only during the formative years but throughout the course of the life span.

DEFINING SOCIAL SKILLS

Like many psychological or behavioral constructs, social skills has been defined in numerous ways. No single definition appears to enjoy widespread acceptance in the professional literature. Social skills is among the most widely misunderstood and ill-defined of all psychological constructs. Even the construct of human intelligence, which is notorious for lacking a unitary definition and understanding in the professional literature, appears to have a more cohesive and interrelated set of definitions and general agreement.

The difficulty in providing an adequate definition of social skills is partly because the construct is deceptively simple, yet relies heavily on a number of other psychological constructs and basic human traits such as personality, intelligence, language, perception, appraisal, attitude, and behavior-environment interaction. The diversity of related traits, abilities, and behaviors that constitute social skills, along with the complexity of the behavior-environment interaction necessary for their acquisition and performance, has resulted in numerous definitions.

Another definitional problem to consider is that professionals from a very broad group of disciplines including social work, education, psychology, psychiatry, special education, and psychiatric nursing have been interested in the construct of social skills. Each discipline has its unique perspective or way of looking at the construct, so it is not surprising that many different definitions of social skills exist. Table 1.1 lists the key elements of 16 relatively recent and influential definitions of social skills. Although this listing is certainly not exhaustive, it provides a solid general appraisal of current thinking regarding the essential elements of the social skills construct.

In comparing these 16 different definitions of social skills, it becomes obvious that although each is unique, there is a general familiarity or commonality among them. In other words, the definitions of social skills may differ somewhat, but the similarity among them is probably greater than any differences. Thus, recognizing that wording or terminology may vary among different definitions, Michelson, Sugai, Wood, and Kazdin (1983) proposed an integrated definition of social skills that includes the following seven components:

1. Social skills are primarily acquired through learning (especially social learning, including observation, modeling, rehearsal, and feedback).

2. Social skills contain specific and distinct verbal and nonverbal behaviors.

3. Social skills include both effective and appropriate initiations and responses.

4. Social skills optimize social reinforcement (e.g., beneficial responses from the social environment).

5. Social skills are interactive by nature and include both effective and appropriate responses (e.g., reciprocity and timing of specific behaviors).

6. Social skill performance is influenced by the attributes of the participants and the environments in which it occurs (i.e., situational specificity). Influences such as age, gender, and prestige status of the recipient affects one's social performance.

7. Deficits and excesses in social performance can be designated and marked for intervention.

TABLE 1.1
Key Elements of Modern Influential Definitions of Social Skills

Authors or Source	Definitions
Argyle, 1981	Social behavior that is effective in realizing the goals of the interactors
Combs & Slaby, 1977	The ability to interact with others in a given social context in specific ways that are socially acceptable or valued and at the same time personally or mutually beneficial
Foster & Ritchey, 1979	Those responses that within a given situation maximize the probability of maintaining or enhancing positive effects for the interactor
Gresham, 1981	Behaviors that maximize the probability of reinforcement and decrease the likelihood of punishment contingent on one's social behavior
Gresham & Elliott, 1987	Behaviors that in given situations predict important social outcomes
Hargie, Saunders, & Dickson, 1987	The skills employed when interacting at an interpersonal level with other people, which are goal-directed, interrelated, appropriate to the situation, identifiable units of behavior, and learned behaviors
Kelly, 1982	Identifiable learned behaviors that individuals use in interpersonal situations to obtain maximum reinforcement from their environment
Libet & Lewinsohn, 1973	The complex ability to emit behaviors that are positively or negatively reinforced and not to emit behaviors that are punished or extinguished by others
Matson, 1988	A socially skilled person, who is much more likely to receive the types of reinforcers generally considered to be socially acceptable or desirable
Mcguire & Priestley, 1981	Those kinds of behavior that are basic to effective face-to-face communication between individuals
Shepherd, 1983	An individual's observed behavior during a social interaction, characterized by the ability to sustain social roles and relationships
Schlundt & McFall, 1985	The specific component processes that enable an individual to behave in a manner that will be judged as competent
Schneider, Rubin, & Ledingham, 1985	The nexus between the individual and the environment; the tools used to initiate and sustain the peer relations that are a vital part of psychological well-being
Trower, 1979	Individual targets or goals sought to obtain rewards, and goal attainment dependent on skilled behavior
Young & West, 1984	Specific positive interpersonal behaviors that lead to desirable social outcomes

Thus, given these common core elements, it may be said that social skills are learned, composed of specific behaviors, include initiations and responses, maximize social reinforcement, are interactive and situation-specific, and can be specified as targets for intervention.

Aside from the specific similarities among definitions of social skills, it is both interesting and useful to analyze the content of different definitions in order to delineate major typologies. Gresham (1986) noted that the numerous definitions of social skills can be divided into three general types: a peeracceptance, behavioral, and social validity.

Peer-acceptance definitions tend to rely heavily on peer acceptance or popularity indices (usually measured through sociometric assessment techniques) in defining social skill. Thus using this definition, one might say that a child who is well-liked by and has good relationships with other children is socially skilled.

Behavioral definitions tend to explain social skills as situation-specific behaviors that maximize the chances of reinforcement and minimize the chances of punishment based on one's social behavior. Many (if not most) of the definitions of social skills found in Table 1.1 use a behavioral definition framework, thereby showing the popularity of this approach. This popularity is probably because it is useful in specifying antecedents and consequences of social behaviors that can easily be operationalized for assessment and intervention purposes.

Social validity definitions depict social skills as behaviors that predict important social outcomes (such as good peer relations or positive social judgments by others. Gresham (1986) noted that the social validity definition is a kind of hybrid between the peer acceptance and behavioral definitions, is criterion referenced, and has received increasing empirical support. Social validity definitions historically have been used with less frequency than the other types, but have gained popularity in recent years.

EXAMPLES OF SOCIAL SKILLS

Regardless of how social skills are defined, a working definition of the construct is only one aspect necessary for understanding. To get a better idea of the tangible or practical aspects of social skills, it is important to look at the concrete examples in this chapter, which provide tangible frameworks for viewing social skills.

A good general framework of basic social skills categories and subcategories was developed for a social skills training program produced by Stephens (1978) and later detailed by Cartledge and Milburn (1986). By the use of a task analysis method, social skills were grouped into four major categories and further analyzed into 30 subcategories. These general categories and subcategories are detailed in Table 1.2.

TABLE 1.2
Four General Categories and 30 Subcategories of Social Skills*

Self-Related Behaviors	Environmental Behaviors
Accepting consequences	Care for the environment
Ethical behavior	Dealing with emergencies
Expressing feelings	Lunchroom behavior
Positive attitude toward self	Movement around environment
Responsible behavior
Self-care
Task-Related Behaviors	Interpersonal Behaviors
Asking and answering questions	Accepting authority
Attending behavior	Coping with conflict
Classroom discussion	Gaining attention
Completing tasks	Greeting others
Following directions	Helping others
Group activities	Making conversation
Independent work	Organized play
On-task behavior	Positive attitude toward others
Performing before others	Playing informally
Quality of work	Property: own and others

* Identified in a social skills training program developed by Stephens (1978).

Obviously, even the 30 subcategories in this social skills breakdown could be divided and broken down even further. Stephens (1978) actually identified 136 specific social skills that fit into these general categories and subcategories. Using the major category of interpersonal behaviors and the subcategory of coping with conflict as an example, we see that six specific social skills can be identified:

1. Responds to teasing or name calling by ignoring, changing the subject, or using some other constructive means

2. Responds to physical assault by leaving the situation, calling for help, or using some other constructive means

3. Walks away from peer when angry to avoid hitting

4. Refuses the request of another politely

5. Expresses anger with nonaggressive words rather than physical action or aggressive words

6. Constructively handles criticism or punishment perceived as undeserved.

Of course, these six specific social skills do not exhaust the behaviors involved in the skill of being able to cope with conflict in an appropriate manner, but they serve to provide a good example of how social skills can be conceptualized at different ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Preface
• 1 The Nature and Value of Social Skills
• 2 Developmental Issues in the Acquisition and Performance of Social Skills
• 3 Assessment of Social Skills: Best Practices and New Directions
• 4 Designing, Implementing, and Evaluating Social Skills Interventions
• 5 Social Skills Training as an Intervention for Specific Problems, Populations, and Settings
• 6 A Review of Selected Social Skills Training Programs
• References
• Author Index
• Subject Index