Autism, Aspergers and social thinking: A conversation with Michelle Garcia Winner
February 7, 2010
One day during Matthew’s freshman year at our local high school, he observed Joe pushing his girlfriend flirtatiously and then tapping her on the head. The couple kissed, took each other by the hand, and skipped away. Inspired Joe’s success, Matthew tried the same moves on another girl with too much force, and she ran to the principal’s office in tears.
When I arrived at school for a debriefing, Matthew was trying to explain himself. “Joe did the same thing to Sue, ” he cried, “and she liked it!”
Good social skills vs. bad social skills? Not exactly, says Michelle Garcia Winner. She is the developer of Social Thinking, a philosophy and a treatment for individuals with social-cognitive deficits such as autism, Asperger syndrome, ADHD and nonverbal learning disorder (NLD).
“Social thinking is required before the development of social skills. Successful social thinkers consider the points of view, emotions, thoughts, beliefs, prior knowledge and intentions of others (this is often called perspective-taking - considering the perspectives of others).”
I got the chance to meet San Jose based Michelle Garcia Winner last week in Palo Alto, where she was speaking to a group of teachers and parents. She is what we call in the autism community “A big deal.” But she is humble and approachable so I stopped slobbering on her after a few minutes.
“In neurotypical (so-called normal-thinking) people like Joe,” says Michelle, “social thinking is hard-wired at birth and learned intuitively from infancy onward. Joe developed communication skills as he grew up, steadily observing and acquiring social information. He learned how to respond to the people around him. Social thinking and intelligence is something that most of us take for granted.”
Matthew, however, needs to be taught how to think socially and to understand the use of related social skills.
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