The promise and practice of teaching social communication skills: A commentary on Abbot-Smith et al., 2023

Abstract

In this commentary, I endorse Abbot-Smith and colleagues’ call for social conversation skills training and raise challenges to designing such efforts. One challenge is to identify a set of conversational skills that are essentially universally important insofar as what is appropriate and effective conversational behavior varies situationally and culturally. A second challenge is to identify meaningful outcomes for training and how they should be assessed. In considering these challenges, I discuss Social Problem-solving Skills Training, cultural variability in children’s conversational behavior, and governmental agencies’ standards for students’ conversational competence.