Social-cognitive Skills Training on Interpersonal Understanding of Social Norms During Adolescence
adolescence; interpersonal understanding; Mental health; social cognition; social norms
Background: Social-cognitive skills training (SCST) in a therapeutic setup can result in more positive outcomes when incorporated with psychotherapy, especially among adolescents with minor social-cognitive impairments in their social interactions. It may result in multifarious benefits to mitigate their social-cognitive dysfunction. This study aimed to identify the effects of SCST on interpersonal understanding of social norms in adolescents with low social cognition. Methods: In this quasi-experimental research, 80 adolescents (1019 years) with low social cognition, no previous experience of skills training, and absence of any psychological disorders, especially those that affect their social-cognitive functioning, with assent from the participants and written informed consent from the parents/guardian and a score below 58 on the Need For Social-Cognition Scale, were included. They were randomly allocated into SCST or waitlist control group. SCST consists of 20 sessions with indoor activities, games, and discussions, and it has been arranged for 1 hour per 3 days a week for 3 months. Edinburgh social cognition test (ESCoT) was used to assess the degree of interpersonal understanding of social norms among adolescents as part of pre and posttests. Results: The Wilcoxon Sign Ranked Test showed that the interpersonal understanding of social norms after SCST is significantly higher than the interpersonal understanding of social norms SCST with a large effect size. The mean (standard deviation) scores in the ESCoT test improved significantly (P < 0 .001) following [W = 0.001, P < .001, r = 1.000]. Conclusion: SCST effectively improves the interpersonal understanding of social norms, an essential developmental milestone during adolescence. It highlights the importance of focusing on mental health as a developmental asset that can influence social-cognitive development in the future. 2024 The Author(s). This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/) which permits non-commercial use, reproduction and distribution of the work without further permission provided the original work is attributed as specified on the SAGE and Open Access page (https://us.sagepub.com/en-us/nam/open-access-at-sage).
Indian Journal of Psychological Medicine;Volume;47;Issue;6;pp.569-575
All Open Access; Gold Open Access; Green Open Access
https://doi.org/10.1177/02537176241255052 https://www.scopus.com/pages/publications/85195309862?origin=resultslist
Jacob L., Dept. of Psychology, Christ University, Karnataka, Bengaluru, India; Reddy K.J., Dept. of Psychology, Christ University, Karnataka, Bengaluru, India