Introduction

This year, we are introducing the Group Corner, a section of the EYELLER devoted to the discussion of important group issues occurring within the Group Program and how they effect our groups and participants.  Any comments, questions, etc., are welcomed and should be sent to Dr. Cotugno at acotugno@partners.org.

2010
April

2009
December | September

April 2010

Over the past few years, we have begun to refer to our groups more as Social Competence groups rather than as just Social Skills groups.  Social Competence is a broader term that reflects the many underlying competencies and core social abilities that are required to engage effectively in social situations.  This would include a recognition and awareness of an impending or existing social situation and an understanding of many of the complexities involved.  Social skills however, are also critical in this process for they allow us to engage in meaningful and well-regulated social interactions (to actively carry out the social exchange) once we are aware of and understand the requirements and expectations of the situation.

Social relationships and interchanges are in fact much more than just “social.”  They also involve the need for adequate self-regulation and control, a connection with our emotions and how they are brought into (and left out of) an interchange, the ability to attend to, process, and understand sufficient information within and surrounding a social interchange or relationship, the capacity to communicate in a form defined by the situation, and to monitor, manage, and direct as needed motor, behavioral, and sensory issues.  Thus a frequently complicating factor in our discussions of the “social impairments” inherent in autism spectrum disorders is that the impairment we refer to is not just “social,” but may be social-cognitive (i.e., attention, joint attention, executive functioning, etc.), social-emotional (i.e., stress and anxiety related, etc.), social-behavioral (i.e., avoidance, passivity, etc.), or obviously, even mixtures and combinations of all of these.  Most recent research in areas of social functioning (see Cotugno, 2009) has revealed a much more complex underlying structure affecting social skill development that likely will require a broad, multifaceted approach to its treatment and remediation.

In YouthCare Social Competence groups, we attempt to address many of these concerns by focusing on eight “core variables” throughout the year, adjusting our techniques and interventions with these variables as the groups move through each of the five stages of group development.  Last year (2008-2009), we focused intensely on the core variables of “stress and anxiety control and management” and “flexibility, change, and transitions.”  For each child in a group, this involved the identification of individual and group stressors and stress triggers, improving ways to appropriately communicate the experience of stress, the development of stress management techniques and their ongoing practice and use in stress-producing situations.  Groups worked on using deep breathing, relaxation, visual imaging, self-talk, and positive affirmation techniques.  This year (2009-2010), we have extended this to focus intensely on “emotion competence,” which is the recognition, labeling, understanding, and regulation of emotions as they occur in social situations.  An emphasis is placed on recognizing and identifying specific emotional experiences, labeling those emotions with some specificity, discussions to understand how and why we experience them, and addressing the significant issue of effectively regulating and managing our emotions. 

The  goal of our program, the Social Competence Intervention Program (SCIP), is to construct and refine effective, evidence-based interventions in areas of need for children with ASD and to develop links as to how this can be transferred and generalized to home and school applicability.  We will use future “Group Corner” articles to keep you informed of our progress and as always welcome your input and feedback.  I can be reached at acotugno@partners.org.

Reference
Cotugno, A.J. (2009). Group interventions for children with autism spectrum
disorders. London: Jessica Kingsley.

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December 2009

The first quarter of the School-Year Group Program has been completed.  Nearly all the groups have moved through Stage One in their development which focuses on orienting to and understanding group process (e.g., learning about one another, rules, expectations, etc.) and are now working on the next stage, that is, on forming cohesive group connections (i.e., using the information they learned and practiced in Stage One).

As the groups move through these stages of development, we will be focusing on several specific core issues most relevant to the individuals in our group.  In this year’s groups, we are placing particular emphasis on Emotion Competence, the ability to recognize, label, understand, and regulate emotions as they arise in group-related, interpersonal situations.  Emotion competence is consistently reported as a critical deficit area in individuals with ASD and as such, seriously compromises social development in peer group situations.  In working on the development of more effective emotion competence, we hope to give our group participants increased capacities to recognize and label a range of emotions they are experiencing in order to better understand how this impacts relationships and how to better regulate emotions.  To do this, we construct specific tasks and activities within each group to address emotion competence.

With most of our groups we begin each session with a “Today I Feel….” chart, requesting each member to think about and share with the group how they are feeling as they begin group. The chart consists of a variety of both positive and negative feelings which children may select and discuss. This activity presents each individual as well as the group many opportunities to work on attending to, labeling, expressing, understanding, and regulating their emotions. During the early stages of group development we also use a number of games such as “Emotion Bingo”, and “Emotion Sort” which allow members to further expand and develop their emotion vocabulary and to learn to recognize specific characteristics of emotional expressions.

These are just a few examples of how through developing emotion competence, we believe that our group participants will be better prepared to think about, understand, respond, and regulate their emotions as they arise in peer-group, interpersonal situations.

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September 2009

As the summer has wound down and the school year has begun, the Group Program has been busy preparing for the upcoming slate of social competence/social skill groups that will be offered for this year.  We would like to provide you with some information on several important issues occurring within group.

As you may be aware, we spend a significant amount of time reviewing all the information available on a child who may be entering one of our groups.  We do this to get to know the child and his or her strengths and weaknesses, to help us in placing a child within the right group with the best match of children, and to help us in constructing individual goals for that child within a group.  Once children are placed in groups, we construct a set of group goals, paying attention to each child’s individual goals and how they may be addressed within the specific group.

This year, our group program will be addressing several critical or “core”variables that will be interwoven within the tasks and activities constructed for each group. 

These core variables include:

• emotion recognition, labeling, and understanding
• stress and anxiety control and management
• joint attention
• flexibility, change, and transitions

Thus, our tasks and activities which are structured around fostering and enhancing group and peer-based interactions will specifically address recognition and awareness of emotions and how they affect group interactions, the stress and anxiety that often occurs within groups and peer-based interactions and how to manage them more effectively; the need for focused and flexible joint attention when engaging others, and the capacity to make frequent shifts and changes flexibly within peer and group interactions.

In future editions of the EYELLER, Group Program staff will be describing some of the tasks and activities we employ and how they may be applicable to the home situation, how an understanding of the developmental model we use in groups can be a useful construct when parenting, and how stages of development may apply a little differently with children with autism spectrum conditions.

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