Leveling Up Social Communication Skills

Video GameBy Hanna Bogen, M.S., CCC-SLPCommunication Works therapists know that appealing to the interests of their clients can make all the difference between an engaging, successful social learning experience and a trudge through the social learning “mud.”  We often encourage students to collaboratively come up with monthly themes to guide social regulation activities.  Recently, teens in one social group explored self-regulation, executive functioning, and social communication skills within a video gaming theme, and learned that the process of creating a video game incorporates many of the skills practiced during typical social groups!The Concept:  Video Game–Themed Social RegulationThe Details:  From start to finish, creating a video game involves strong planning and organizational skills as well as teamwork, cooperation, and adherence to the group plan.  Our month of video game–themed activities began with learning about the importance of creating a storyboard, or future sketch, to represent the “big picture” of the game.  Once a storyboard was created, students could better plan the details needed to design the game’s characters, levels, and actions.  Students then practiced perspective taking and inferential decision-making by creating characters and asking others to guess information about their characters and game theme based on contextual clues.  For example, if the character has scuba diving gear and a treasure chest, the students might infer that the game takes place under water and characters are tasked with finding sunken treasure.  Finally, the group members worked together to design a video game on the iPad.  The process of creating a playable game required adherence to the group plan, self-monitoring, and collaborative problem solving.How It Helps:  Client-directed learning has a strong foundation in research, and allows children to learn new skills while being motivated by personal interests. Since social communication and self-regulation skills are required for any task we attempt, these skills can be supported within almost any theme! Helping students recognize the importance of starting a large project (like creating a video game) with a future sketch of the finished product supports smoother transitions between “big picture thinking” and “detail thinking.” Practice with perspective taking and smart, inferential decision-making increases student awareness of contextual clues in new situations to help them make better choices about how to react and behave.Home Enrichment:  Below are some ways you can incorporate video game–themed activities at home:

  • Encourage your child to create a future sketch of the cover of his/her imaginary video game. Your child can use magazine clippings, web-based clip art, and/or drawings to bring that sketch to life. See if other family members can guess what the game is about using the contextual clues from the created cover.
  • Put each family member’s name in a hat and have everyone draw a name. Create an avatar for the family member you have selected based on what you know about them. For example, if the family member loves baseball and cooking, the avatar might have a baseball glove on one hand and a chef’s hat on his head. You can draw the avatar or use a website to create one.
  • As a family, come up with video game–themed phrases as code words for supporting expected social behavior. Some examples might include:

Rebooting -- taking a calming break and then revisiting a challengePowering up -- initiating a taskTurtling -- being highly defensiveLag time -- thinking time one takes before responding so his or her behavior can be expected

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