Social Thinking Skills

Social cognition encompasses the skills necessary to process information and apply it to social situations.  Individuals diagnosed with autism and related disorders may have difficulties processing social information. This hinders one’s ability to  interact with others and to develop positive social relationships.

 

The professionals at the Center for Social Cognition focus their therapeutic efforts on improving the individual’s higher-order cognitive skills such as, knowledge acquisition, information processing, problem solving, and self-management and control of cognition. These skills are important to an individual’s vocational, educational, and social success. 

 

Using the SIM framework, our intentional therapists help each individual to:

 

  • Develop the ability to approach a task in a goal-oriented way.
  • Develop the ability to establish a goal and devise a strategy to reach it.
  • Develop the ability to think through the problem systematically.
  • Develop the ability to delay a response until all information has been systematically processed.
  • Develop the ability to link new information to knowledge previously acquired in order to solve a problem.
  • Develop the ability to accurately perceive and locate relationship between objects and people.
  • Develop the ability to understand the sequence and order of events.
  • Develop the ability to see similarities despite some differences.       
  • Develop the ability to use language as a tool to move from concrete examples to an abstract understanding.
  • Develop the ability to mentally manipulate visual detail.
  • Develop the ability to take responsibility and monitor own behavior.
  • Develop adequate knowledge of social rules, roles, and routines.
  • Learn to communicate intentions effectively.
  • Learn to correctly perceive and interpret the social behavior of others.
  • Learn to initiate and maintain interaction with others.
  • Develop the ability to communicate in an empathic and flexible way.
  • Develop adequate awareness of one’s interactive strengths and weaknesses.
  • Learn to flexibly change communication styles to meet changing social demands.
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