Social Skills Vocabulary

Social Competence - use of social skills and resources to meet one’s social goals (e.g., applying various ways to ask for help - email, asking a parent, texting a friend)

Social Skills - Discrete behaviors typically displayed by socially competent individuals (e.g., eye contact, turn taking, greeting others, etc.).

Social validity - a measure of how acceptable and important a treatment, procedure, or outcome is to society. It's a key part of applied behavioral analysis (ABA).

Strengths-Based Approach - collaborative methods that focus on a person's strengths and resources to help them achieve their goals

Pivotal Response Training - an intervention program based on ABA using the natural environment to capitalize on available naturally occurring reinforcers. Targets pivotal behaviors in four areas: responsivity to multiple cues, initiation, motivation, and self-management.

Expressive communication skills - range from nonverbal or alternative methods to minimally verbal to same as typical peers or advanced verbal abilities.

Nonverbal communication - facial expressions, body language

Social reciprocity - the give and take of social interactions

Social conventions - the hidden “rules” of social interaction within a culture

Token economy or Reinforcement system - a system that rewards people for demonstrating desired behaviors. It uses tokens or points that can be exchanged for other rewards.

Cognitive-behavioral interventions for social skills - focus on altering individual’s perceptions and interpretations of the social world in order to change thought patterns around typical/common social encounters 

Applied Behavioral Analysis - a psychological therapy, often used to treat autism and other developmental disorders, that uses learning principles to help people change behaviors.

Video modeling - a teaching method that uses video recordings to demonstrate a skill or behavior. It can be used to teach new skills or improve existing ones.

Peer networks - purposely arranged diverse peer groups (i.e. with and without disabilities) who meet outside of class/school to participate or focus on a shared activity

Joint attention - a social experience shared by two or more people and often initiated by one person (e.g., a toddler enjoying a toy may look to another person on the room and then back to the toy to share that experience).

Priming - the incidental activation of knowledge that facilitates memory recall or behavioral performance. Can be visual or verbal and involve rehearsal/practicing the skill just before performing it. Does not teach new skills, but helps activate skills the individual already has.