Abstract

TURINI BOLSONI-SILVA, Alessandra  and  CARRARA, Kester. Social skills and behavioral analysis: compatibilities and conceptual and methodological divergences. Psicol. rev. (Belo Horizonte) [online]. 2010, vol.16, n.2, pp.330-350. ISSN 1677-1168.

Social skills can be conceptualized as a set of different kinds of behavior in the face of demands in an interpersonal situation, provided they maximize gains and reduce losses to social interactions. While there is a general description of social skills, specific populations have their own interpersonal needs. Their mapping and consequent focused interventions appear to be a productive way in what concerns the study of social skills. According to the Applied Behavior Analysis, the persons’ repertoire should be assessed as completely as possible, considering its phylogenetic, ontogenetic and cultural influences. It is believed that a significant proportion of “behavioral problems” is maintained by the production of positive and negative reinforcement, its understanding requiring the assessment of that repertoire. This paper discusses the possibility of describing social skills functionally, testing the argument of understanding them as adjectives that qualify a directory eventually incompatible with problematic behavior. For such, one must define social skills and functional analysis, so as to consider, subsequently, the relations between these concepts, based on empirical examples

Keywords : social skills; behavioral analysis; functional analysis.

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