Teaching Approach for Developing Nonverbal Communication Skills in Students with Social Perception Deficits

In Part 1 of this two-part article a basic approach to training social perception skills involving discrimination of specific social cues, understanding of the social meanings of such cues, appropriate usage of such cues, and application of such cues to social problems were described. This approach was then applied to the development of social skills involving body language, or kinesic cues. In Part 2 this same teaching approach is applied to nonverbal communication areas as follows:proxemics, or the use of distance, spatial arrangements, and territories ; vocalics, or the use of prosodic, paralinguistic, or nonlinguistic features; and artifactual cues involving clothing and cosmetics. Although these nonverbal communication areas are less familiar to educators than the area of body language, they are of equal importance for the development of social competence.