Executive Functioning and Social Pragmatic Communication Skills: Exploring the Threads in Our Social Fabric

Abstract

The development of treatment plans and related strategies to help our students with social pragmatic challenges improve upon their social communicative competencies requires us to explore how Theory of Mind (ToM), Central Coherence (CC), and Executive Functioning (EF) are interwoven. In this article, we will deconstruct elements of social learning to explore how EFs play a critical role in face-to-face communication and how this information is not captured on any current standardized assessment currently available in our field. Addressing the need to teach our students to be stronger social observers or “detectives” in order to socially problem solve and the practice adapting their behaviors based on the situation and the people within it is key to teaching social EF. Treatment philosophy encouraging the use of systematic social communication frameworks, such as Carol Gray's Social Stories (Gray & Garand, 1993) and Social Thinking's Social Behavior Mapping (Winner, 2007b) is explored to assist our students' in their development of social and self-regulatory strategies.