Learning Disabilities and Social Skills: Reflections

I recall a conversation I had very early in my public school career with the mother of one of the students in our program for students with learning disabilities (LD). Over the previous three or four years, this mother had been a very strong and effective advocate for her son, managing to get him enrolled in one of the first LD classes in the city and making certain that he received every possible allowable service. Neal, her son, had made good progress in the program, and at this point we were returning him to the general education class full time with support services from special education. As I discussed this administrative decision with Mrs. Davis, the mother, I expected her to be pleased about her son's progress and to express her appreciation of this school program. Instead, to my surprise, she responded by making two points. First of all, she was certain that Neal would not have made this progress if she had not spent countless hours in the evening tutoring him. In other words, we were not nearly rigorous enough in our teaching. And second, which was even more unnerving to me, she stated that we had failed to teach her son critical social skills. When pressed, she pointed out that Neal was a nice, quiet boy, but was too compliant. She had no confidence in his ability to resist inappropriate peer requests. If some of the neighborhood children told him to pilfer from the local store, for example, she was not sure that he would refuse. Although I did not overtly contest her statements, my inner reaction was that Mrs. Davis was unrealistic in her expectations of the public schools. Nevertheless, that conversation has continued to resonate with me, and three decades later I am increasingly convinced of the truth of her words. The Nature of Social Skill Deficits for Populations with Learning Disabilities Johnson and Myklebust (1967) provided some of the earliest professional work that I encountered on social skills and learning disabilities. They presented the socially imperceptive child, defined as having difficulty with "the perception of the total social field, perception of oneself in relation to the behavior of others as well as to events and circumstances that involve others" (p. 295). These authors viewed social imperception as a specific learning disability, and saw socially imperceptive learners has having difficulty interpreting the behaviors of others, particularly in nonverbal communication such as reading the facial expressions of others. The research literature repeatedly has documented the difficulty children with learning and other mild disabilities have in comprehending nonverbal cues and with problem solving (e.g., Cartledge, Stupay, & Kaczala, 1996; Forness & Kavale, 1996; Nixon, 2001). Students with LD are also noted to have problems with attending to task, with social communication, and with peer acceptance (Nixon, 2001). In their pioneering work, LD professionals such as Johnson and Myklebust (1967) assumed these social skill deficits represented a neurological learning disorder specific to learners with LD. Others have questioned this premise, however, noting that (a) some children with LD evidence no social skill deficits; (b) children with LD perform similarly to other at-risk groups, such as juvenile delinquents or children with academic deficits on social skill assessments; and (c) social skill deficits are not specific to children with LD (e.g., Gresham, 1993; Schumaker & Deshler, 1995). Furthermore, the source of the social skill deficit is considered to be immaterial; children need to receive appropriate interventions according to the nature of their social skill deficit, not based on speculation on some underlying cause. This more behavioral, skills training (SST) approach has dominated the field of social skills training and is the model that I have used in my own work. Social Skill Interventions Since the early writings on this topic in the 1960s and 1970s, formal social skill assessments (e. …