SOCIAL COMMUNICATION
5-11 years
WHAT IS SOCIAL COMMUNICATION?
Social communication refers to “meaningful rule based interaction between two or more people”.
Effective social communication involves:
 The ability to interpret and use appropriate facial expression (including eye contact), body
language, gesture and tone of voice.
 Understanding the rules of turn-taking.
 The ability to initiate, maintain and end a topic of conversation.
 Being aware of listener’s needs e.g. how much information to provide.
 Listening to what the speaker is saying.
 Being appropriate in your expression, e.g. obeying social rules.
 The ability to interpret and use non-literal language e.g. jokes, idioms, sarcasm, irony and
metaphors.
WHY DO SOME CHILDREN HAVE DIFFICULTIES WITH SOCIAL COMMUNICATION?
Some children are diagnosed with a Social Communication Disorder. These difficulties can also be
a part of or referred to as Asperger’s Syndrome, High Functioning Autism, Functional Language
Disorder, Pragmatic Language Impairment or Semantic/Pragmatic Disorder.
There are many reasons why a child may have poor social communication.
These include – poor understanding of language, difficulty expressing themselves, poor attention
and listening skills, emotional and behavioural difficulties, learning difficulties, a lack of confidence or
poor role models.
HOW DO SOCIAL COMMUNICATION DIFFICULTIES IMPACT ON CHILDREN IN SCHOOL?
Conversations and relationships with friends during the school day make high demands on a child’s
social interaction skills. This can result in children with language and communication difficulties
struggling to meet social demands within class and during break times. Social communication
difficulties can therefore impact on both their learning opportunities and social inclusion.
Children who have social communication difficulties can have difficulty forming meaningful
relationships with peers of a similar age. This is often related to their difficulty understanding the
language of emotion, being able to think about other peoples’ perspectives and using abstract
thinking.
It is important for school staff, including lunch time supervisors, to be aware of how these difficulties
can lead to children becoming socially isolated and at risk of teasing or bullying, as well as a greater
risk of developing a low self-esteem and a negative self perception.
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School staff should try to incorporate a level of structured or informal support within school and these
needs should be targeted as part of the child’s Provision MAPP/IEP.
HOW DO I KNOW IF A CHILD HAS SOCIAL COMMUNICATION DIFFICULTIES?
A child with poor social communication may have some of the following difficulties:
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Unable to follow ‘teacher talk’ and chat between other children.
Difficulty following group discussions / conversations in class and other settings.
Poor use of eye contact.
Poor turn-taking / increased length of turns during conversations.
Poor listening skills.
Poor or limited interpretation and use of gesture, facial expression, tone and volume of voice.
Inappropriate physical proximity or contact.
Difficulty understanding words which refer to concepts such as feelings, status and time.
Limited verbal comprehension especially of ambiguous language i.e. when the context and
inference needs to be used to interpret multiple meanings and indirect requests e.g. a child
may respond with “yes” and not move a muscle when asked “Can you open the door?”
 Poor or limited understanding and use of non-literal language. e.g. “cut it out” for “stop it”.
 Difficulty understanding humour dependent on language.
 Difficulty using language for a variety of reasons e.g. to ask, request, apologize, resolve
conflict. They therefore sometimes display challenging behaviours e.g. hitting, grabbing,
crying as a consequence.
 Difficulty sticking to the topic of conversation so that their conversation is often inappropriate
or irrelevant.
 Difficulty developing a topic, for examples, a child may copy another child/adults sentence
structure or use closely associated ideas.
 Poor awareness of the listener’s needs so that they provide too much or too little information,
or launch into monologues.
 Use of scripts in certain situations i.e. using the same phrases each time.
 Difficulty sequencing information appropriately.
 Bizarre or inappropriate attitude e.g. being withdrawn, rude, over-verbal or over-familiar.
 Limited relationships with peers, especially evident at break times.
 Difficulty seeing themselves as part of a group and therefore may not respond to instructions
given to the group.
 Difficulty learning the rules of games.
 Difficulty grasping unwritten school rules.
 Obsessions, rituals and stereotypic behaviour.
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