Social-Communication
Stages of Development
Stages of Social Development
Seeking-Liking
Social-Orienting
Social Maintaining
- seeks out others to share interests and emotions; initiates and responds to bids for interaction; develops social reciprocity and joint attention; interacts intentionally using behavior, movements, or words
- develops awareness of & interest inpeople; develops shared attention; interacts pre-intentionally through eye contact, movement, sounds, or facial expressions
- able to consider & interpret different perspectives; is learning social norms; shows awareness of self-efficacy; develops ability to navigate various social interactions
Birth
Conversational - combines words flexibly to communicate many ideas & thoughts; is learning to communicate in different social situations, including the nuances of interacting with others and in groups
Before Words - non-symbolic; uses movements & behavioral methods to communicate, does not talk or use pictures
Emerging Language - symbolic; uses single words & pictures to communicate, is learning to combine words for different purposes, may be using scripts
Stages of Communication Development
Rubin, Townsend, & Vittori; 2015, SEE-KS Chevallier et al., 2012, The Social Motivation Theory of Autism Prizant, Wetherby, Rubin, Laurent, & Rydell; 2006, The SCERTS Model
Image 2: Social Communication Stages of Development
across the district. This graphic depicts three social stages — So- cial Orienting, Seeking-Liking, and Social Maintaining —along the top, and three communication stages — Before Words, Emerging Language, and Conversational —along the bottom. Identifying a child’s specific stage in both domains is essential to ensure that embedded supports are developmentally appropriate. The developed graphic shows that social skills and communi- cation skills do not develop in isolation of each other; but rather, they typically develop in tandem. In students with developmental differences, one domain may advance more quickly than the other, creating a developmental gap. In this case, the domain that advances more quickly eventu- ally plateaus, if the gap in the other domain is not addressed. For example, autistic students who use AAC may exhibit a plateau in communication development due to social learning differences. When the gap in social development is intentionally addressed as a priority and social development catches up, communication development can again progress more effectively with appro- priate AAC intervention.
The Social-Communication Development graphic not only identifies and defines common terminology across the district for development; it also serves as a visual support to assist teach- ers in identifying possible gaps in social or communication de- velopment exhibited by students. It has also proved helpful for families when describing their child’s current abilities and dis- cussing potential priority goals that correspond to their child’s observed level of development. (See Image 2: Social Communi- cation Stages of Development)). b. Scaffolded Supports for Communication Develop- ment: Priorities & Goals . To provide guidance for em- bedding UDL supports that are developmentally ap- propriate. It also details priorities and goals that, when mastered, signal a student is progressing towards the next stage of communication development. With information from a 2015 presentation (May, 2015) by Emily Rubin, MS, CCC-SLP, we developed this resource to serve as a reference for educators. It defines the communication char-
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