It’s common to have trouble with social skills. If an individual is experiencing deficits in cognitive skills due to conditions like a brain injury, psychiatric disorder, or a learning disability, their social cognition may be impacted. So, how can clinicians help these individuals address their social skills and potentially improve their social cognition? On this page, we’ll explore what social cognition is, and how to work on improving it.
Social cognition refers to how people think about themselves and interact with others. Our social cognition skills include reading social cues and facial expressions, remembering names and faces, the ability to utilize empathy to imagine and understand the emotions of others, regulating one’s emotions, and even examining one’s own biases. These skills are naturally difficult for some people. Alternatively, they may become difficult due to conditions affecting cognitive skills.
Clinicians such as occupational therapists, speech-language pathologists, and mental health professionals can work with their clients to identify difficulties with social cognitive skills and exercise these skills. Along with the other skills that they are practicing for daily life, social skills go a long way in helping an individual achieve a fulfilling life. Here are some common deficits that clinicians can work on with their clients:
Many individuals struggle to identify and respond appropriately to social cues. This could include facial expressions, body language, and tone of voice. People may not always say exactly what they mean – often out of politeness or worrying about how another person may react to how they’re feeling.
For example, if you’re talking to an individual at a party for a long time and they start speaking more flatly, looking around the room, and turning their body away from you, they may want to leave the conversation but don’t want to state this directly. It’s helpful to work on identifying social cues so that in a situation like this, you could notice the person’s demeanor and come up with a polite way to end the conversation, such as saying “I don’t want to hold you up, but it was really nice talking to you!”
Some helpful practices for identifying social cues include role playing social situations (with a clinician or with multiple clients in group therapy), as well as exercises that help individuals practice recognizing facial expressions.
Emotion regulation refers to the ability to recognize one’s emotions and manage them appropriately. It’s normal to feel strong emotions like sadness, stress, anger, and joy, however we can learn to manage our actions stemming from these emotions so that we don’t harm or overwhelm ourselves or others.
Clinicians can help individuals recognize what feelings they are having, accept the emotions, and pause before reacting so that they can ensure their reactions are aligned with the person they want to be. (This is a big topic to cover – we’ll be sure to write an article all about working on emotion regulation skills soon!)
A big part of socializing is utilizing sympathy and empathy, with a skill that psychologists call “Theory of Mind.” This cognitive skill refers to the ability to attribute mental states to ourselves and others, essentially understanding that people have beliefs, emotions, and experiences that contribute to how they think and behave. It also includes the understanding that others’ beliefs and experiences are different from ours, and therefore we all behave in different ways.
Theory of Mind allows us to understand why people may behave a certain way, and to predict how they might act and react in certain situations. This skills is critical for interacting effectively with others. It allows us to empathize and understand why individuals act the way they do, and allows us to meet them where they are when interacting with them – rather than expecting them to act the way we may want them to.
In the social world, conflict and misunderstanding are common. However, with communication skills, conflict doesn’t need to escalate. Using problem-solving skills in communication can help to resolve conflict and misunderstanding before it gets out of hand.
Let’s make up an interaction as an example. In this example, your friend and you have made a plan to go see a movie together. Your friend cancels. This hurts you because you were really looking forward to spending time together. Using your problem-solving skills, you can address this in a straightforward way without being aggressive. You could say to your friend, “No problem about cancelling. But honestly I’m feeling sad that we can’t hang out, I was looking forward to it! Could we reschedule for next week?” Your friend (who hopefully is also open to using their problem-solving skills) may then say something like “I’m really sorry for cancelling, I’m just feeling so overwhelmed this week and need to catch up on some work. Yes let’s reschedule for next week! Are you free on Friday?”
Of course, regardless of how much you work on your own social and problem-solving skills, you can’t control how other people behave. So the goal is to act in a way that’s true to yourself, express yourself appropriately, and be accepting that you can’t control others.
Throughout life, we all pick up some cognitive biases that can be difficult to unlearn. Biases are inherently untrue, because humans are individual and varied, and all-encompassing rules about who is good or bad, or right or wrong, simply can’t be correct. But, if we are aware of our biases, we can notice them when they arise and challenge these ideas.
Many biases are common, such as the bandwagon effect, which makes us believe that we should behave in a certain way because the people around us are doing it. Biases can also include harmful stereotypes, such as thinking that certain personality traits are shared by all individuals within a racial group. It can be a beneficial practice to question why we have a certain opinion of ourselves or others, so that we can address these biases as they arise. Recognizing our own biases can help us deconstruct unhelpful ideas about people, and therefore not put people on pedestals, or look down upon them, but simply treat them as the unique individuals that they are.
Simply practicing is one of the most effective ways to work on social skills. Group therapy offers a safe environment to practice social skills face-to-face with other people. Skills like eye contact, understanding facial expressions and body language, problem-solving conflict, taking turns during conversation, and making conversation with new people in order to make friends.
Clinicians and their clients may take video during practice sessions so that the client may witness their own behavior. The clinician can offer feedback and give the client specific skills to work on.
Some social skills are better practiced in-person with other people, but certain skills can be worked on with fun digital brain games! Skills such as recalling faces and names can be worked on with digital social cognition exercises.
Support from family members can make a huge difference when an individual is working on improving a cognitive skill. If family members are invested in the individual’s growth, their support can allow the individual to feel more confident, practice their skills in a safe space, and feel comfortable trying the strategies they learn out in the real world.
Socializing is an important part of life. It allows us to connect with others, and feel seen and understood. Social cognition skills can be impaired or undeveloped for a wide range of reasons. With the right clinician, strategies, and support, individuals may experience growth in their social cognition skills.
Pulling from our decades of experience in Cognitive Therapeutics, we aim to help you enrich your practice through the use of digital and paper tools.
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