Social Skills Training

Synonyms

Social relations intervention

Definition

Social skills training is a therapeutic approach used to improve interpersonal relations. The therapy focuses on verbal and nonverbal behaviors common in social relationships. For example, participants may be encouraged to use eye contact when speaking with other people or maintain a certain amount of personal space with the person they are speaking with. Subtleties such as inflection and tone and their impact on conversational style may be of focus during training. People often participate in social skills training because they have never learned such skills (e.g., children entering school and children with developmental disabilities); need to improve upon previously learned skills (e.g., people experiencing shyness, couples in marriage counseling, or executives taking leadership training); or need to relearn behaviors lost secondary to a mental illness or acquired brain injury (e.g., schizophrenia, ADHD, and traumatic brain injury)....