A Social pragmatic communication disorder (SCD) is an issue portrayed by confronting challenges in utilizing verbal or non-verbal correspondence for different social purposes. Children diagnosed with this disorder have trouble arranging social conversations inappropriate spoken language.
However, they appear to be good with pronouncing words and sentence construction. Although it is common to struggle with social situations at some stage of your life, for someone having SCD, he or she encounters this challenge on daily basis.
Importance of Social Communication
Social communication abilities incorporate the capacity to shift discourse style, take the viewpoint of others, comprehend and fittingly utilize the standards for verbal and nonverbal correspondence, and utilize the underlying parts of the language (e.g., jargon, sentence structure, and phonology) to achieve these objectives.
Social communication, spoken in language, and composed language have a mind-boggling relationship. Social relational abilities are required for language articulation and perception in both spoken and composed modalities. Communicated in and composed language abilities take into account compelling correspondence in an assortment of social settings and for an assortment of purposes.
Social Communication Disorder: Risk Factors
It was diagnosed and defied in 2013 for the first time. This disorder is related to the brain condition i.e. a situation where the brain has not developed in a proper way. An individual affected with this disorder may have difficulties in social communication that includes
- Communication for different social purposes such as social greetings i.e. saying hello or introducing yourself to someone, maintaining eye contact while interacting with someone, sharing personal information or some knowledge, etc.
- Differentiating between the categories of people and modifying the way of interaction based on the characteristics of the listener such as communicating differently to a young person and an adult or behaving differently at a formal place and a casual gathering.
- Difficult to respond to other persons during a conservation i.e. taking turns in conservation or hold out your hands for shaking hands.
- Observing and apprehending the verbal and non-verbal indications such as a person looking around and avoiding eye contact while you’re in conversation with that person, means the person is not interested in your talk.
- Understanding various forms of verbal communication such as meanings behind the words that aren’t clearly stated such as implied and indirect use of the language.
- Understanding the context and tone of the words spoken in a situation such as humor, sarcasm, metaphors, etc.
Now let’s jump to the section where we’ll get to know about its symptoms and causes, and learn how to treat it.
1. Symptoms
Now talking about how do you know that someone has a Social Communication Disorder (SCD)? The symptoms of SCD tend to appear in early childhood however it is not fully clear till the time of development. Along with the growth of a child, the demands for communication and language abilities increase. So, it becomes easier to diagnose this kind of disorder.
Children having SCD show little response to social initiatives and find it challenging to interact with others. For an official diagnosis, a complete evaluation is done by the language and speech therapists as well as by clinical psychologists to check whether a person fulfills the criteria for SCD.
2. Causes
Coming to the causes of SCD, medical science is unable to perfectly understand the exact cause of SCD like all other communication and psychological disorders. However, genes appear to be the major factor to cause this disorder.
Any person having some family history of Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD), learning or communication disorders is more likely to inherit those genetic features and thus diagnosed by SCD.
3. How to Treat
There are several opinions on the way we can treat Social Pragmatic Communication Disorder (SDC). Some believe that SCD is nothing by itself, it is just another symptom of already existing conditions such as ASD or other communication disorder.
These people say that the same techniques can be practiced for the treatment of SCD as for ASD due to a lot of similarities between them. Generally, children with Social Communication Disorder should be trained for the skills that they require to engage with other people within their environment.
Later, after teaching these skills to the children, these skills should be reinforced by the means of practice. For this purpose, the trained language and speech therapists which are experts in dealing with social communication disorders can guide you properly.
These practices can be performed in small groups where 3 to 4 persons can be given a situation and asked to interact with each other. Similarly, role-playing games can be a good tool to help children learn different tactics to handle a social situation.