Social Skills Intervention Participation and Associated Improvements in Executive Function Performance

Table 2

Association of SCI-A curricular units and executive functions.

SCI-A unit	Curricular content	Executive function
(1) Recognizing facial expressions	Visual recognition of key facial features; Displaying facial expressions; Strategies for scanning facial features to read emotions
(2) Sharing ideas	Speaker skills: gaining attention, staying on topic, sharing the main idea, appropriate eye contact/body proximity/volume; Listener skills: appropriate eye contact/body proximity	Working Memory: staying on topic; Inhibitory Control: sharing only the main idea/not sharing irrelevant information; avoiding interrupting others
(3) Turn taking in conversation	Conversational reciprocity; Using questions and comments; Transitioning in/out of conversations	Inhibitory Control: avoid interrupting others; Working Memory: staying on topic, building off another person’s comments; Cognitive Flexibility: switching/transitioning topics
(4) Feelings and emotions	Understand emotional range/variance/intensity; Self-control and emotion regulation; Using context to understand others’ emotions/perspective taking
(5) Problem solving	Identify components of problems (who, what); Generate and evaluate possible solutions; Collaborate with others to solve problems	Inhibitory Control: use appropriate conversational skills to collaborate; Working Memory: holding the ideas of others to collaborative problem solving; Cognitive Flexibility: generate alternate solutions

Consistent with EF being only one of several interrelated constructs that contribute to social competence, the content in any given unit involves a combination of EF and other processes (e.g., social reciprocity, and pragmatic language).