I work closely with two colleagues, Stephanie Madrigal (primary author of Superflex: A Social Thinking Superhero Curriculum) and Dr. Pamela Crooke (co-author of You Are You a Social Detective). We now comprise the social thinking team that continues to create new ways to understand and teach about social learning. All three of us travel and give workshops, work in our Social Thinking Clinic in San Jose, CA, and create products to inform the public about what we have learned. While we are not technically doing research, we are constantly creating and testing our theories with our student and adult clients.

Recently, we discussed a group of students and young adults who have caught onto our concepts relatively well, noticing that their progress was a bit speedier than our more typical client... and we got to thinking about how this type of client was different from our more typical client with Asperger Syndrome.

What we realized is that we have this group of clients who present with social learning challenges and significant anxiety. When they are adults and adolescents that can tell us more clearly about the genesis of their problems and this particular group consistently told us that they understand the concepts of social thinking but had a hard time implementing them due to anxiety. While our students with AS and similar social cognitive challenges would tell us they truly did not know to think about aspects of the social information until we explained it to them, this other group of students said they had thought about all this social information before. We observed their more linear and steady improvement when we paired cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) techniques for treating anxiety with social thinking (which also is CBT based).

Here was our "ah-ha" and our current theory that we are now operating under: All students correctly diagnosed on the autism spectrum, and often with ADHD and related disabilities, have a social cognitive learning challenge that makes socialization difficult for them and for many this produces anxiety. Therefore, the anxiety with these students is the "tail wagging the dog". While anxiety treatment is important for this group, the first step is to teach them to learn more about the social mind and social expectations.

However, another group of students appears to have social learning problems due to their social anxiety. This group of students can appear socially very impaired; socially retreated to the point that they may even start to feel shunned by their peer group. Our thinking for this group is that the social anxiety puts up a "yield sign" in their brain that prevents them from accessing and interpreting their own social thinking information in ways that allow them to interact easily with their peers.

Therefore, they also need to have their treatment intertwined with social thinking lessons, but it must start with providing strategies for calming anxieties and then as they can start to see through their anxiety they can look into how their own behavior affects others' thoughts for good or bad. They learn that by accident that their dysfunctional anxiety coping strategies have developed into socially self-defeating behaviors (e.g., "I don't think anyone wants to talk to me so I will just stay away from everyone"). With treatment they formulate their own social thinking plan as part of their anxiety treatment plan. Embedded in the treatment for anxiety, therefore, is learning how to approach others and respond in a way that becomes more self-serving in a positive way. An "inner coach" overcomes their self-defeating thoughts, encouraging them to move through (rather than to avoid) the social thoughts and skills they need to positively influence the thoughts of others.

We will group these socially more anxious students with our highest-level students who have true social learning challenges. Initially, you may not know the difference between the two groups, but you will observe as a clinician that the anxiety group, if they do their self-study (homework), will move through your program more rapidly and with fewer questions about how the social mind works.

© Michelle Garcia Winner 2011
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