Social Thinking is the user friendly term for “social cognition”

Social thinking develops from birth, much like walking; it is intuitively “hard wired” into most people to work at learning how the social world works.

Students with developmental delays in social thinking do not intuitively learn social information the way neurotypical children do; Instead, they have to be cognitively taught how to think socially and understand the use of related skills.

The system of teaching “social thinking and related social skills” was pioneered by Michelle Garcia Winner beginning in the mid 1990s.

The approach requires students to learn to think about thinking in their play, classrooms, social relationships, work settings

This is a language-based learning approach and best taught to students with near average to way above average verbal intelligence who have language skills.

The core philosophies of social thinking are:

We think with our eyes to figure out other people’s thoughts, intentions, emotions, etc..

Our thoughts and emotions are strongly connected. How we think affects how we feel, how we behave affects how others think and feel; If your friends are people who make you fee good about you over time, then you must learn how to make friends and how to make other people feel good using your actions and your language

We think about people all the time, even when we have no plans to interact with them; We adjust our own behavior based on what we think the people around us are thinking – this how we drive our cars!

As part of our humanity, each of us is on a daily quest to avoid each other’s “weird thoughts”. We constantly consider people around us and adjust our behavior to help people have “normal thoughts about us”.

Social thinking is something all of us do every day, all day, even when we are alone in our homes; To understand a TV drama or sitcom one has to think about the character’s emotions, thoughts, reactions, etc. Even reading novels requires social thinking.

Social thinking, therefore, plays into our academic world requiring us to think about the motives and intentions of people we read about in literature and history.

Social thinking affects us in adulthood; To hold a job, most of us have to adapt our own social behavior based on the perceived thoughts of the people we work and live with.

By learning how other people think, our students can understand other people’s points of view and why specific social and communication skills are required in different situations.

When people learn how to think differently and flexibly, they can think anywhere; This is different from just teaching social skills. Individuals taught only the “skill” often will only perform that skill in the environment in which they learn it.

Social thinking theory involves helping students understand “Theory of Mind”. This entails assisting students to develop “perspective taking”.

The four steps to perspective taking are:

o Step 1: When you come into my space, I have a little thought about you and you have a little thought about me

o Step 2: I wonder “why are you near me”, “what is your purpose for being near me?” “Is it because you are just sharing the space, do you intend to talk to me or do you intend to harm me?” I have to consider all these things in order to keep me safe around people as well as to predict what will happen next.

o Step 3: Since we have thoughts about each other, I wonder what you are thinking about me.

o Step 4: To keep you thinking about me the way I would like you to think about me, I monitor and possibly modify my behavior to keep you thinking about me the way I want you to think about me.

These four steps of perspective taking are what is expected for every student across the school day while sitting in a classroom, on the playground or just hanging out. Social regulation is at the heart of social participation and we each participate socially just when we are in the presence of others, even when we are not talking to them!