Social Thinking

Social Thinking is a social skills curriculum developed by Michelle Garcia Winner. The curriculum is intended for students with social learning disabilities, especially those with autistic spectrum conditions. Its main focus is on teaching students to think about how others perceive them.

Social thinking what individuals do when interacting with other people: namely, they think about them. Most people take social thinking for granted, as it is generally an intuitive process that considers the points of view, emotions, and intentions of others. In neurotypical people, social thinking is hard-wired neurologically at birth and learned intuitively from infancy. Children with autism spectrum disorders generally do not intuitively learn social information the way neurotypical children do. Those with ASD and related social learning challenges who are “higher functioning” need to be cognitively taught how to think socially and understand the use of related social skills.

While these challenges are commonly experienced by individuals with autism spectrum disorders (high-functioning), social communication disorder, Asperger's, ADHD, nonverbal learning disability (NLD) and similar diagnoses, children and adults experiencing social learning difficulties often have received no diagnosis.

The term Social Thinking was coined by Michelle Garcia Winner in the late 1990s while working with higher-functioning students, who were expected to blend in with their peer group by producing more nuanced social responses. This theory views social skills as dynamic and situational, not as something that can be taught and then replicated across the school campus. Instead, social skills appear to evolve from one’s thinking about how one wants to be perceived. So, the decision to use discrete social skills (e.g. smiling versus “looking cool”, standing casually versus formally, swearing/speaking informally versus speaking politely) are not based on memorizing specific social rules (as often taught in our social skills groups), but instead are based on a social decision-making tree of thought that involves dynamic and synergistic processing. Winner, (2000 & 2007) has suggested we could better understand multidimensional social learning needs by exploring the many different aspects of social information and related responses that are expected from any one of us to utilize well, in order for us to be considered as having “good social skills”.

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