Chapter 11 - Social Skills

Abstract

A person's adaptive behavior requires a repertoire of social skills and the ability to use these skills at the right time and place to meet the daily demands of school, work, and life. Most professionals and parents similarly explain social skills as discrete verbal and nonverbal behaviors that are learned by watching people around them or specifically taught to maximize social reinforcement. This chapter describes the importance of social adaptive skills and their implication for general functioning, discuss factors that impact the development of social skills, provide an overview of assessment procedures, and describe how to teach social skills to address deficits in adaptive behavior. A case study is presented that exemplifies assessment procedures and intervention planning using a person-centered approach to meet the needs of individuals with deficits in adaptive behavior. Social skills and social competence often are used interchangeably to describe an individual's social functioning. However, these terms should be distinguished to promote clarity for instructional purposes. They constitute situation specific patterns of behavior necessary for interactions with others.