Social pragmatics consists of mechanisms that engage, maintain, and end social interactions. These heavily depend on attention and language processing skills. From birth, we are predisposed to learning these mechanisms. We learn them in the context of our cultural and familial values. We could identify several aspects of social communication including: level of assertiveness and responsiveness, social scripts (greeting, politeness…), and pragmatic mechanisms (initiate, turn take, topic maintenance, request, humour, clarify, negate, inquire, warn….). Difficulties with social pragmatics have profound implications on how individuals manage emotions and social relationships, particularly when conflict is involved. The lack of such social pragmatic skills in both children and adults could lead to social isolation/alienation, interpersonal disputes, or emotional and physical harm. Difficulties could be caused by the social environment or brain function (congenital or acquired). In both cases, intervention provides meaningful progress and improved social integration, particularly when caregivers participate.

We sometimes identify children who appear to have had this problem since early childhood, but most often, we see difficulties with clients who have sustained frontal head injury in motor vehicle accidents. Depending on the severity of the injury, the brain is quite capable of reorganize itself, particularly in cortical areas that are redundant in both hemispheres. Therapy is highly specific to the individual and is designed to address specific difficulties that handicap an individuals ability to function in social and academic/work settings. Examples of skills that need to be rehabilitated include; learning how to study notes effectively, learning how to research to complete written assignments…