Social Skills: Methodological Issues and Future Directions

Abstract

The basic premise of social skills training is that there are individual differences with respect to the degree of social competency exhibited by individuals in social situations and that for some of these individuals this lack of adequate performance is problematic. The presumed etiological bases for poor social skill performance are multiple and not mutually exclusive (Curran, 1977). The skills deficit hypothesis for poor social performance is that an individual does not possess in his behavioral repertoire the requisite skills needed for a competent performance. A variation of the skills-deficit interpretation is that while an individual at some point in time may have possessed the requisite skills, these behaviors are no longer readily available to him because of some decaying process (e.g., the decrement in skill performance often seen in individuals who have been institutionalized for long periods of time). Another interpretation of inadequate social performance is that the individual does possess the requisite skills, but due to his previous learning history a less adequate or socially inappropriate response has a higher probability of occurrence. For example, an individual who has experienced a learning history where aggressive behavior “paid off” may become oriented to this form of responding even though it is now inappropriate and even though the individual possesses the requisite skills for a more socially appropriate response.