AN OVERVIEW -SOCIAL COMMUNICATION (PRAGMATIC SKILLS)

A big hello from me,
Tell me who does not have problems with social communication, I am sure everybody does. I know !!!!!!!!one of my friend go on and on with the stuff he has to say,never waits for other's reciprocation, so be my guest.

Communication is a social act and unless one is conducting a monologue with one’s self, it involves at least one other person. Communication within a social situation can be more challenging than just understanding the words of others. There are unwritten rules that govern interactions and these may change depending on the circumstances and whom one is talking to. In other words the whole process is called social communication or pragmatic skills. Communication takes place within a social context. Speech/ verbalization become communication when there is a desire or intent to convey a message to someone else. Therefore, these two areas, communication and social skills are tightly interwoven and interdependent. Unfortunately for children with autism, these are the two areas of primary difficulty. Therefore children with autism even those who are considered verbal, usually experience significant difficulties with social communication.

 Let’s see what these children have to say (pragmatic skill deficit):

J Have difficulty seeing another person’s perspective: tendency to interpret from own point of view. This impacts social interaction and the understanding of perspective in narratives whether in text, movies or TV format.

J Exhibits good recall of people’s names, facts and other information (the concrete information or facts); often the depth of knowledge about a topic may be superficial.

J Not aware of social proximities; how much close he has to stand when he is taking to a person, not touching the other person unnecessarily.

J Have difficulty understanding that other people have unique thoughts and ideas.

J Give no or minimal eye contact during an interaction; eye contact may be distracting and it provides too much sensory information to the child with ASD.

J Speak too loudly or too fast during conversation process.

J Have difficulty staying on topic; the child may be confused by the unwritten expressions in the other persons face.

J Have difficulty attending to an auditory message. (Especially if another person speaks in phrases) If stressed, agitated, or highly stimulated.

JChild is comfortable in delivering monologues.

J Talk aloud to self in public situation and be unaware that others can hear the content of the self talk and make judgments about them.

J Unable to draw strategies to initiate, terminate, or facilitate a conversation.

J Difficulty knowing that he has to answer when a question asked.

J Finds difficulty to participate in a conversation by taking turns with the other speaker.

J He/ she have inability to notice and respond to the non-verbal aspects of language.

J Lack of awareness that, he has to introduce a topic of conversation in order for the listener to fully understand.

J Not knowing which words or what sort of sentence type to use when initiating a conversation or responding to something another person has said.

J Talk about unusual topics, likes to include topics which are fascinating to him like taking about “cars “

J Difficulty with recognizing more subtle expressions, feelings and emotions though he identifies basic emotions of others and self.

J Have difficulty multi-tasking ex; talking or listening at the same time.

J Have difficulty recognizing, identifying and understanding various other states of emotion expressed by others and knowing what to say in that situation.

J Experience difficulty recognizing the lies

J Difficulty using social etiquette (using please, thank you etc)

J He/she may have difficulty summarizing about the topic, and what new information is needed.

J Comprehension difficulty (unable to entirely follow the message given by other person)

J He is comfortable in limited topics and sometimes conversing topics which are out of focus.

J Not aware of the time, place and person of the topic to be discussed.

J Miss nonverbal cues of others (like discomfort of another person).

J May ask repetitive and irrelevant questions.

J Lack of repertoire or have difficulty selecting/applying appropriate social communication strategies in everyday situations (generalization).

J Have difficulty knowing that he has to give the communication partner sufficient information to understand the message.

J Make statements that are factually true but socially inappropriate because of lack of awareness of the impact of his/her statements on others.


 will work on highlighting  strategies to help with social communication deficit  :) pretty soon.

Heavy rains remainds of challenges in life
Never ask for lighter rains
Ask for better umbrella