In this two-part series, we focus on developing rule-based social learning activities that connect to educational standards and support social learners with significant social attention and social interpretation challenges. We will concentrate specifically on understanding and supporting individuals who have social learning characteristics described as Challenged Social Communicators (CSC) in part 1 and Emerging Social Communicators (ESC) in part 2. These social learners are described as having relative strengths in concrete learning with a tendency to interpret both social and written information in a very literal manner. Parents often report struggles with organization, sarcasm, literalness with reading comprehension and writing, as well as a more awkward manner when socially engaging with peers. Both parts of this series will explore the power of social attention using video clips to provide explicit and practical examples for teaching basic social concepts to encourage the development of theory of mind (perspective taking), sharing social attention, and awareness of trickery.

We will also address assumptions about social attention, learning in groups, and reliance on test scores to guide intervention planning. We will examine how socially based critical thinking and executive functioning make it difficult to truly understand the social learner’s real time learning abilities.