Social cognition refers to the mental processes involved in perceiving, attending to, remembering, thinking about, and making sense of the people in our social world. Social cognition is a sub topic of various branches of psychology that focuses on how people process, store, and apply information about other people and social situations
We know in autism there is a deficit in social cognition.
Deficits in social cognition include the following :
Challenges in social and emotional learning, including difficulty in
• understanding and regulating emotions
• appreciating the perspective of others
• developing prosocial goals
• using interpersonal skills to socialise
Difficulty differentiating one's own feelings from the feelings of others, taking the perspective another person, and modifying language & communication accordingly (i.e., theory of mind)
Difficulty integrating diverse information to construct meaning in the context (i.e., central coherence).
These are some of the core deficits of autism.
Teaching Emotions
Understanding emotions is a challenging area in autism. Hence it is necessary to teach emotion in a systematic manner from an early age is essential.
The five levels of emotional understanding are:
• Recognition of facial expression from photographs – this is the ability to recognize, from photographs, facial expressions such as happy, sad, angry and afraid.
• Recognition of emotion from schematic drawings – This is scored if the child is able to identify the correct face from four facial cartoons: happy, sad, angry and afraid, in the same way as above
• Identification of situation-based emotions – these are emotions triggered by situations (e.g. fear when an accident is about to occur). At this level the child should be able to predict how the character will feel, given the obvious emotional content of the picture.
• Desire based emotions – there are emotions caused by person’s desire being fulfilled or unfulfilled. At this level the child should be able to identify character’s feelings (either happy or sad) according to whether his or her wishes are fulfilled or not.
• Belief based emotions – there are emotions caused by what someone thinks is the case, even if what they think conflicts with reality. The child is required to follow a sequence of three pictures and to interpret the feeling that the cartoon characters will experience according to what they believe their desires have been satisfied or not.
(Note: for further reading refer to book Teaching Children with Autism to Mind-Read by Patricia Howlin, Simon Baron-Cohen & Julie Hadwin)
If you are struggling to teach emotions to ASD, look into our step-by-step method of teaching Emotional Regulation to ASD :
1. Customise the Feelings folder as per the picture with colour coding this will help the user to understand the Emotional Zone from the beginning.
2. Use photo album to teach labelling feelings
3. Teach situation-based emotion using various narratives, pictures, stories, worksheets and videos
4. Teach desired based & belief-based emotion using various narratives, pictures, stories, worksheets and videos
5. Teach Emotional Regulations first by identifying their actions in each zone,
6. Provide alternatives to regulate emotions
7. Work out strategies to calm down
To know more about how to teach these kind of important life skills to your child do join our Communication Sessions.
Self-concept in autism
“Awareness of oneself as distinct from others and a preference as motivators for the action and responses of Others as people rather than physical objects, is lacking in autism.” – Core Deficits
The mental growth of normal developing individuals depends on a rich cooperation between conscious, feeling and intending persons who share interest in a world in which they perceive meaning. In autism we find lack of communicative intent & they normally does not get reinforced by the response of others
Deficits in discrimination between self and other, and poorly expressed preference for human interaction is what we find in most of the infants in autism spectrum. They prefer more of physical and sensory input rather than humans’ interaction.
Techniques to develop self-concept: -
• Teaching response to name calling by using some reinforcement
• Looking in the mirror and pointing to self while calling his /her name
• Make a self-introductory for the child using visuals focusing on their hobbies and things that they are good at (About Me Folder)
• Focus on strengths of the child
• Train them on the difficult areas : Social skills, transitions, peer interaction, organization skills
• Make him or her aware of their own diagnosis, so that they accept and understand themselves better & preparing them for better self-advocacy
• Implement positive reinforcement
Joint attention
Joint attention is the shared focus of two or more individuals on the same object or event.
For example – child looking at what the care taker is showing and follows the direction of the pointing finger of the caretaker demonstrating joint attention. In autism mostly we find a deficit in joint attention.
To teach join attention we use various methods like using an AAC in every step of teaching any skill to the child. Teach him/ her the way they understand and learns better by use of various teaching learning materials & technology. In our home program we teach using these methods, if you are interested to learn more do contact us.
Social Referencing
Social Referencing occurs when individuals (most typically infants) use cues from people in their environment to learn what behaviors, emotions and actions are appropriate in the particular setting. This is a type of social learning and is an integral part of the developmental process in children. The observation of others behavior leads to the eventual imitation of these behaviors. Infants learn to analyse the facial expressions and actions of others in order to determine socially appropriate emotions and behavior. Thus, looking for emotional clues about a situation in the faces of other people is called social referencing.
For example, if a child sees fearful expression on his mother’s face as he reaches to touch something, he will be less likely to touch it.
Strategies to teach social referencing in autism:
• developing rapport with the child (use of play therapy helps a lot)
• developing eye contact – using cause n effect toys, wearing sunglasses, putting stickers on their face, wearing funny hats, looking in the mirror together, using primary reinforcements if child looks in the eye
• play and turn taking – blowing bubbles, singing an action song, tickling game, sitting on a swing, blowing a balloon and let it go
• develop anticipatory behavior of the child by delaying response
• develop pointing
• focus on encouraging child to shift attention from what he / she is doing with what you have
• create situation for the child to initiate a communication
• create communicative temptations e.g. eating the child’s favourite cookie without offering him/her
Understanding social situation
The main difficulty in people with autism is their inability to understand and read others emotional expression and to react in social cues. This would lead to difficulties in most social skills such as:
- sharing attention,
- social initiation
- difficulty in social reciprocity
They will have difficulty in sharing their emotions and understanding others. This no way means that people with autism lack emotions. This only explains that due to their inability to understand emotions, children with autism may lack the sense of empathy and behave in socially inappropriate manner.
Social reciprocity is the back-and-forth interaction between people, during which the behaviour of each person influences the behaviour of the other person.
Deficits in social reciprocity include:
• difficulty initiating bids for interaction,
• problems responding to bids for interaction initiated by others,
• difficulty initiating and maintaining conversations that are sensitive to social context and the interests of others,
• limitations with maintaining turn-taking in interactions, and
• difficulty recognizing and repairing breakdowns in communication
Strategies to develop socialization in Autism:
Make Folders / Communication Boards in Avaz (as given below) and use it in daily basis with the child
• Greetings & Manners
• Wishes
• About me
• My Family
• Responses & Comments
• Organize predictable routines using full day pictures schedules & prepare child beforehand for any change of schedule incorporating it in the schedule
• prepare for transitions strategies:
- using objects, pictures/ word
- using first and then schedules
- transition cards
- using finished box (refer our blog on attending skills)
• explaining social situations using social stories (step by step method of how to write an appropriate social story as per requirement of the child is what we teach in our Parents Empowerment Program on Social Stories)
• teaching how to ask for help using “help” sign/ card, use from core words folder in Avaz
• role play of hypothetical social situations
• using visuals of social ethics & manners to inculcate good behaviour in social situations (sorting good & bad behaviour)
Interpersonal Skills is a social skill required to socialize and communicate effectively in a social situation. Lack of such skills can cause social awkwardness. Interpersonal skills are the acts a person uses to interact with, and relate to others in a social situation.
Interpersonal synchrony or reciprocal movement and fluid transition from the “speaker” to the “listener” in a conversation can be observed in a normally developing newborns but its absence is often the earliest intimation of defective non-verbal communication in the autistic.
Despite clear difficulties in the interpersonal reciprocal relationships which drive early development autistic children seem to have normal drive to attachment, and respond selectively to caretakers in terms of attachment or closeness- seeking behaviors.
Developing interpersonal skills :
• Practice conversation using Avaz on a daily basis (you can use real pictures of events, daily schedules, etc)
• Wishing family members / teachers, etc on special days
• Conversation on real events by use of real-life picture
• Use of personal narratives to do conversations
• Use of shared reading to talk about different seasons, festivals, events
• Training on how to behave with peers, elders, youngers by using appropriate visuals
• Role play enacting social situations and teach children appropriate conversation skills
• Using social stories of various social situation and teaching the correct behavior in a given social situation
• Using comic strips and teaching how to start, continue and end a conversation appropriately
• Individuals with autism also need to be trained on what to talk and what not to talk as per social norms
• Training on how to be able to listen and relate to others ‘emotions by using visuals
To know more about teaching social skills, do join our Parent Empowerment Programs and our ongoing sessions in Communication & Digital Literacy.