A child may have a large vocabulary. He or she may be able to speak in long sentences, answer questions accurately, write creative stories, or explain a favourite topic in great detail.
Yet, that same child may struggle to join a group conversation.
He or she may not know how to respond when a classmate disagrees. He may struggle to defend himself when accused of something he did not do. She may have difficulty recognising when a friend is losing interest in a conversation. He may talk at length about his favourite topic but struggle to ask another person about theirs.
This is where social communication becomes important.
When we talk about speech therapy for autism spectrum disorder, it is easy to focus on measurable language skills. How many words can the child use? Can he answer who, what, or where questions? Is she speaking in longer sentences? Can he tell a story?
These skills matter. However, they do not always tell us how effectively a child is able to use communication in real-life social situations.
A child can have excellent language skills and still struggle with social communication.
Understanding this distinction can help parents, teachers and therapists better understand what a child actually needs support with.
What Is Social Communication?
Social communication is the ability to use verbal and non-verbal communication to connect, interact and develop shared understanding with other people.
It is not simply about whether a child can talk.
It is about how a child uses communication with another person.
Social communication includes the ability to:
- Start an interaction with another person
- Respond to another person’s communication
- Take turns in a conversation
- Stay in a reciprocal exchange
- Notice what another person knows or does not know
- Understand the purpose of a conversation
- Stay relevant to the current topic
- Clarify misunderstandings
- Repair communication breakdowns
- Adjust communication according to the situation
- Understand another person’s perspective
- Join group conversations
- Negotiate during disagreements
- Maintain friendships over time
At its heart, social communication involves creating and maintaining shared understanding.
Two people may both use sophisticated language. However, if one person is unable to understand what the other person is trying to communicate, or unable to respond in a way that keeps the interaction moving forward, communication can still break down.
That is why social communication is much more than vocabulary and sentence length.
Social Communication Is Not the Same as Receptive or Expressive Language
This distinction is particularly important in children with autism and other neurodivergent children.
Sometimes a child is described as having difficulties with “social communication” simply because he or she does not answer questions accurately.
For example, a child may be asked:
“Where is the ball?”
The child points towards the ball but does not say, “It is on the table.”
This may certainly involve communication. However, the main difficulty may actually relate to:
- Understanding the question
- Understanding the meaning of where
- Understanding or using prepositions
- Finding the words needed to answer
- Formulating an appropriate verbal response
These are primarily receptive and expressive language skills.
Similarly, imagine a child is asked:
“Do you want the red ball or the blue ball?”
The child repeats:
“Red ball or blue ball.”
The child has responded. However, he or she may not yet understand the communicative expectation that the question requires a choice.
Again, this may involve understanding another person’s communicative intent. But the primary difficulty may be in language comprehension rather than social reciprocity.
This distinction matters because not every difficulty in responding to another person is necessarily a social communication difficulty.
As speech therapists, we need to ask a deeper question:
Is the child struggling because he does not understand the language, or because he is struggling to use communication effectively within a reciprocal social interaction?
Sometimes it is both.
However, these are not identical skills, and identifying the difference helps us provide more meaningful support.
Good Language Skills Do Not Always Equal Good Social Communication
Consider a child who can write an excellent comic.
He may create complex characters, use sophisticated vocabulary and write long, grammatically correct sentences.
However, when a classmate says:
“You took my idea.”
He may become silent.
He may struggle to explain:
“I did not take your idea. I had the same idea before you told me about yours.”
Or he may respond with a long explanation that does not address the immediate issue.
Another child may be able to give a detailed presentation about dinosaurs but struggle during group work.
When her classmates ask:
“What should we do next?”
She may not respond.
She may continue talking about her own idea without noticing that the group has moved on.
Or she may become upset when her idea is rejected but struggle to negotiate:
“I understand you want to do it your way. Can we use my idea for this part and yours for the next part?”
Her language may be perfectly adequate.
The challenge is using that language at the right time, in the right way and for the specific social purpose required.
This is why assessing communication only through vocabulary, grammar or sentence length can sometimes give us an incomplete picture.
A child may perform well when asked to:
- Describe a picture
- Tell a story
- Answer comprehension questions
- Define words
- Repeat sentences
Yet struggle when communication becomes spontaneous, unpredictable and reciprocal.
Real life does not always provide a clear question followed by a clear answer.
Social Communication Happens in Real Time
One of the most challenging aspects of social communication is that it often happens in the moment.
A child has to process:
- What the other person has said
- The tone in which it was said
- The current context
- What has happened previously
- What the other person might mean
- What response is needed
- How the response may affect the interaction
All of this can happen within seconds.
This is very different from being given time to write an essay or create a story.
A child may write a thoughtful and sophisticated paragraph about friendship but struggle to keep a friendship going in real life.
He may understand that “friends should take turns” but become confused or upset when the rules of an actual interaction change.
She may know the words needed to express herself but struggle to access those words quickly when she is upset, embarrassed or put on the spot.
This does not mean that the child lacks intelligence or language.
It means that social communication requires the integration of many skills at once.
Why Is Social Communication Important?
Social communication is important because communication is ultimately about relationships.
Children use social communication to make friends.
They use it to maintain friendships, repair misunderstandings and navigate disagreements.
As they grow older, social communication also becomes important in:
- Group projects
- Classroom discussions
- Teamwork
- Employment
- Romantic relationships
- Family relationships
- Self-advocacy
Imagine a student who is wrongly blamed for something at school.
He may have excellent vocabulary. He may be able to write a detailed explanation of what happened.
However, when a teacher asks him directly:
“Why did you do that?”
He may freeze.
He may provide too much information.
He may struggle to identify the most important point.
Or he may respond in a way that sounds unrelated to the question.
The ability to use communication effectively in that moment can be extremely important.
Social communication is therefore not just about learning to make small talk.
It can affect a child’s ability to:
- Advocate for himself or herself
- Explain what happened
- Ask for help
- Set boundaries
- Resolve conflict
- Participate in groups
- Build meaningful relationships
These are life skills.
Social Communication and Friendship
Many children want friendships.
However, making a friend and maintaining a friendship are not always the same thing.
A child may successfully approach another child and say:
“Do you want to play?”
That is an important social skill.
But maintaining the friendship may require much more.
The child may need to:
- Notice when the other person wants to change the game
- Take another person’s ideas into account
- Manage disappointment
- Repair an argument
- Understand when a joke has gone too far
- Return to the friendship after a disagreement
- Share interests while also showing interest in the other person
This is where reciprocity becomes important.
Reciprocity means that communication moves back and forth between people.
It is not simply:
“My turn to talk.”
Then:
“Your turn to talk.”
True reciprocity involves responding to what the other person has contributed and allowing the conversation to change because of that contribution.
For example:
Child A: “I went swimming yesterday.”
Child B: “Was the water cold?”
Child A: “No, but it started raining.”
Child B: “Did you still stay?”
Both children are influencing the direction of the conversation.
That shared exchange is one important part of social communication.
Social Communication in Autism
Children on the autism spectrum may communicate in many different ways.
Some may have delayed language. Others may have advanced vocabulary. Some may be highly verbal but still experience significant difficulties with reciprocal interaction.
This is why we should be careful about assuming that a child’s social communication skills are strong simply because he or she speaks fluently.
A child may have:
- Strong vocabulary but difficulty joining conversations
- Long sentences but difficulty understanding another person’s perspective
- Excellent factual knowledge but difficulty maintaining reciprocal exchanges
- Good storytelling skills but difficulty handling disagreements
- Strong academic language but difficulty advocating for himself in everyday situations
Conversely, an autistic child may communicate very effectively with familiar people, around preferred interests or within predictable situations.
Social communication is therefore highly dependent on context.
A child may manage well in a structured one-to-one conversation but struggle in a noisy group.
He may communicate beautifully when discussing a favourite topic but struggle when the conversation changes unexpectedly.
She may be able to answer direct questions but find open-ended social interactions much harder.
These differences are important to understand when planning speech therapy for autism spectrum disorder.
What Should Social Communication Support Focus On?
Support should not simply aim to make children “more social” or teach them to behave like everyone else.
Instead, the goal should be to help children communicate more effectively, participate more meaningfully and develop relationships in ways that respect their individual communication styles.
Depending on the child’s needs, therapy may support skills such as:
- Initiating interactions
- Understanding and responding to other people’s communication
- Maintaining reciprocal exchanges
- Clarifying misunderstandings
- Recognising communication breakdowns
- Joining group conversations
- Participating in collaborative activities
- Expressing disagreement
- Advocating for personal needs
- Repairing relationships after conflict
Most importantly, these skills need to be practised in meaningful contexts.
A child may be able to answer a worksheet correctly but still struggle to use the same skill during a real disagreement with a friend.
This is why practice through play, conversation, role-play and real-life situations can be particularly valuable.
Looking Beyond Longer Sentences
As speech therapists and parents, it can be tempting to measure progress by what is easiest to observe.
The child now uses longer sentences.
He answers more questions.
She has learned more vocabulary.
These are valuable skills.
However, we should also ask:
Can the child use these skills when they matter?
Can he communicate his point when another child disagrees?
Can she explain what she needs when she is upset?
Can he participate in a group discussion?
Can she repair a misunderstanding with a friend?
Can the child stay in an exchange long enough for both people to develop a shared understanding?
These questions often tell us far more about how communication is functioning in everyday life.
Social Communication Is About Connection
Ultimately, social communication is not simply about producing the correct answer.
It is about using communication to connect with another human being.
A child can have excellent receptive and expressive language skills and still need support with social communication.
Likewise, a child with language differences may have strong motivation and capacity for connection.
The goal is not to make every child communicate in exactly the same way.
The goal is to understand what is making communication difficult and support the child in developing meaningful, effective and authentic ways to connect with others.
When considering speech therapy for autism spectrum disorder, we therefore need to look beyond whether a child can answer questions or produce increasingly complex sentences.
Language gives us the words.
Social communication helps us use those words with other people.
And in real life, that ability to create shared understanding, navigate relationships and remain connected to others can be just as important as the words themselves.