CHAPTER 8

SOCIAL ABILITY


  1. INTRODUCTION - SOCIAL ABILITY IN THE CLASSROOM
    1. The majority of activities done in school are done with others
    2. Satisfying the demands of social life is as critical as fulfilling academic expectations
    3. Social success with friends is of great importance to most children
      1. Children will strive to gain friends, be popular, and look good while avoiding embarrassment and humiliation
      2. This quest for social acceptance may take precedence over academic work
    4. Social interaction draws heavily on attention controls, organization, memory, communication, and higher-order cognition


  2. THE SOCIAL SCENE
    1. Inner-directed or other-directed individuals
      1. Inner-directed people base their actions and words on innate values
      2. Other-directed people allow the social forces to shape their actions and values, i.e., they say and do things that may be viewed as conforming
    2. Children feel enormous pressure to fit in with their peers, which is often internally generated
      1. Children will conform their behavior to fit the code of social acceptance among their friends
      2. Peers also become allies in the exploration of independence and its limits
    3. Social ability undergoes a constant series of tests throughout childhood
      1. Settings
        1. The bus stop, lunch room, corridors and lockers, bathrooms, gymnasium and playground often invite intense social transactions
        2. The classroom may be one of the most protected arenas for peer relationships
      2. Labels
        1. Derogatory terms: wimp, loser, mental case
        2. Positive terms: awesome, cool, neat
      3. Middle School
        1. Social acceptance reaches its utmost importance
        2. Children at this age often find themselves in a conflict-need to appear independent yet extremely dependent on their parents
        3. This period also contains the widest variation in cognitive, physical, and psychological development
      4. High School
        1. These children seem to accept nonconformity a bit more
        2. A period of more conscious image building
        3. Membership in clubs/groups extremely important
        4. Labels are still evident


  3. SOCIAL DEVELOPMENT
    1. Formation of Friendships
      1. Key themes in school-age children's development of friendship:
        1. Level 0: Egocentric perspective (3 to 7 years): children are unable to distinguish their own perspectives from those of others
        2. Level 1: Subjective perspective (4 to 9 years): children understand that the perspective of another person may be the same as or different from theirs
        3. Level 2: Self-reflective perspective (6 to 12 years): children are able to think about their own thoughts and feelings from the perspective of someone else
        4. Level 3: Third person perspective (9 to 15 years): children are aware of the so-called third-person perspective
        5. Level 4: Societal perspective (12 years to adult): the perspectives become generalized into the concept of society's fabric or a legal or moral point of view
      2. "Chumship"
        1. By 8 to 11 years children should be able to form an intense attachment to a same-sex friend
        2. "Chumship" demands intimacy, affective matching, and mutual understanding
    2. Developing Understanding of Others
      1. Social behavior is developed in part by a child's interpretations of the actions of others
        1. Children learn to observe others and note their differences
        2. They also realize that others, too, observe them
      2. Dispositionalist or situationalist viewpoint
        1. Dispositionalist: people act in a particular way because of their internal attributes
          1. People are unchanging: "My teacher is mean", "My father is nice"
          2. Everyone they know is rigidly categorized
        2. Situationalist: the actions or reactions of people are more likely to be determined by the specific situation in which they find themselves
          1. Individuals differ under different circumstances
          2. Personalities are not set and situationalists understand this
    3. Moral Development - Levels as defined by Kohlberg are analogous to Piaget's Stages of Cognitive Development
      1. Preconventional
        1. Children operate in terms of punishment and reward, physical power or authority, obedience and avoiding punishment
        2. Most elementary children are at this level
      2. Conventional
        1. Maintaining the expectations of the family, group or culture regardless of the consequences, loyality to values
        2. Law and order orientation: doing your duty, showing respect, maintaining the social order
      3. Postconventional
        1. Children perceive moral values and principles as valid beyond the authority of people
        2. At this level correct actions are defined in terms of individual rights and standards examined and agreed on by a whole society
    4. Popularity and Unpopularity- the stages which children pass through as they strive to attain and make the use of social ability
      1. There are four subgroups that researchers devised to describe children's sociometric status among their peers
        1. Popular-children are accepted, sought after and respected by peers
        2. Controversial-children of this status are highly liked by some and highly disliked by others
        3. Neglected-these children are relatively inconspicuous, they are not very well known
        4. Rejected-these children are actively excluded, abused and alienated or ostracized
      2. Dimensions of social competencies associated with popularity
        1. Relevance-Ability to "read" a social situation and adapt behavior accordingly
        2. Responsiveness-Capacity to be receptive to and reinforce the social initiatives of others
        3. Timing and staging-Capacity to pace relationships; knowing what and when to do or say
        4. Indirect approaches-Awareness that relationships and interactions are often initiated and sustained by indirect means
        5. Feedback cues-Sensitivity to negative and positive social feedback while relating
        6. Resolution conflict-Aptitude for settling disagreement without resorting to violence (verbal or physical without aggression)
        7. Verbal pragmatics-Understanding and effective use of language in social contexts
        8. Social memory-Recall and use of prior interactional experience
        9. Social prediction-Propensity to foresee the social consequences of one's actions and/or words
        10. Awareness of images-Tendency to present oneself to peers in a socially acceptable way
        11. Affective matching-Ability to discern and reinforce the current feelings of a peer
        12. Recuperative strategies-Ability to compensate for social error
    5. Popularity Versus Chumpship
      1. Chumpships are easily formed especially during the elementary years
      2. Children are eager to have a closeness with friends, which popularity may not have
      3. Chumpship may be a convenient escape route for children experiencing heavy stress or deprivation at school and/or at home


  4. DEVELOPMENTAL VARIATION AND DYSFUNCTION
    1. Attention
      1. Impulsive, poorly planned or unplanned social acts
        1. Insist on everything at once
        2. Hard to engage in the indirect techniques of building a relationship
      2. Insensitivity to feedback cues
        1. Makes it hard for the child to read a relationship, take the appropriate initiative based on that reading, and monitor the effectiveness of the action
      3. Egocentricity, trouble sharing
        1. Difficulty taking the perspective of another child
        2. Focus on their own desires
      4. Lack of attention to social detail
        1. Trouble "reading" the social scene
        2. Unaware of social mistakes
      5. Aggression
        1. Difficulty generating appropriate interactional strategies
        2. Trouble predicting social consequences
    2. Spatial and Temporal-Sequential Ordering
      1. Difficulty decoding and reacting to nonverbal cues
      2. Difficulty with sequential reasoning and prediction

    3. Memory
      1. Problems with social learning from experience
      2. Difficulty remembering names and faces

    4. Language
      1. Receptive Language skills (Language Processing)
        1. Difficulty drawing appropriate social inferences
        2. Misinterpret peers
        3. Inferring the wrong feelings or intentions
        4. When inappropriate reactions occur frequently, significant gaps in relationships can occur
      2. Expressive Language skills
        1. Difficulty with word-finding and sentence formulation
        2. Problems understanding and using in-group language
        3. Misinterpret friendly insults and social exchanges during adolescence
        4. Speed and efficiency of word finding and sentence formulation (timing)
    5. Higher-Order Cognition
      1. Inadequate social cognition
      2. Problems assessing attributions or engaging in moral reasoning
    6. Production Capacities
      1. Well developed production capacity in one or more areas (i.e., gross motor) provides a redeeming feature
      2. Children with gross or fine motor dysfunction's may miss out on an opportunity to display socially advantageous products or abilities
    7. Further Influences
      1. Family and culture
        1. Some families discourage outreach to friends
        2. Children within the same family can differ remarkably in their popularity and sociability
        3. Children vary in the extent to which they enjoy being alone and in their compulsion for company
      2. Schools - the "hidden curriculum" includes pressure to conform to the customs and values of the school
      3. Difficulties with body image
        1. Primary grades-dealing with potentially embarrassing situations (using the rest room)
        2. Late elementary and high school-"looking good"
      4. Peer ridicule of clumsiness or awkwardness
        1. Self-conscious about their bodies during gym class
        2. Puberty
      5. Self-esteem and self-confidence
    8. Complications of Social Inability
      1. A child who is experiencing considerable social failure is apt to react in a number of ways
        1. Low self-esteem
        2. Performance anxiety in social situations
        3. Highly vulnerable to mental health problems
      2. Children differ considerably in their tolerance of social failure
        1. Some find effective compensatory pursuits
          1. More dedicated to school
          2. Develop strong relationships with nonpeers
      3. Various adults aggravate the plight of a socially alienated child
        1. Teachers-PE class
        2. Parents and siblings-being overly critical or unsupportive
      4. Affected children often develop secondary protective strategies to deal with social failure
        1. Withdraw from social interactions
        2. Display aggressive, acting-out behaviors (home and school)


  5. ASSESSMENT
    1. Direct Assessment
      1. Direct observations in various social settings
      2. Direct tests of social cognition: presenting the subject with a story and solicit reactions or solutions
      3. Inventories in which children can describe their own perceptions of their social lives
        1. Piers-Harris Children's Self-Concept Scale
        2. Self-Administered Student Profile of The ANSER System
    2. Indirect Assessment
      1. Observations by parents
      2. Standardized questionnaires
      3. Reports from teachers
      4. Interview with the child


  6. MANAGEMENT
    1. Counseling
      1. Group
      2. Individual
    2. Formal Training
      1. Coaching social skills
      2. Books
        1. All Kinds of Minds
        2. Keeping a Head in School
    3. Social "Homework"
      1. Parents should be aware of difficulties their child is having with peers
      2. Parents can assist directly with the improvement of social skills through shared interactions at home