Social Skill Training in Short-Term Groups

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Social skill training is rapidly becoming one of the broadest applied therapeutic and educational approaches. Many people suffer the inconvenience or pain of not being able to deal with interpersonal relationships. Social skill training is designed to increase the client’s competence in a wide variety of interactions with other people. The term social skills refers to the ability to perform a complex set of both verbal and nonverbal behaviors that compose a consistently effective response to a set of given social situations. It should be noted that social skills are situationally specific. That is, each type of situation has its unique requirements for an effective response. Persons may be skilled in responding to some situations but not to others. For example, some persons may be able to ask for help and express their feelings in situations that call for such behaviors but are not able to refuse others even when imposed upon. Others may be quite expert at all of the brief responses mentioned but falter in complex situations such as extended conversations, job interviews, or dating situations. Responses are considered effective if they help the dient to move toward his or her own goals without imposing on the rights of others. Social skill training, therefore, focuses on both the learning of new behaviors appropriate to a given situation and the process involved in putting together a sequence of effective behaviors. Social skill training may be also used to eliminate or modify those behaviors that interfere with the attainment of personal goals. In training, the acquisition of specific social skills appropriate to given situations is often employed as a means of solving specific, imminent problems. It is an equally relevant means of helping clients develop a repertoire of appropriate nonverbal social skills (good eye contact, appropriate voice volume and modulation) that can be used in a wide variety of situations. Finally, it may serve to assist the client in improving longterm relationships as the client succeeds in meeting mutual goals for concrete situations with a partner.