Can we develop social skills like a martial art?

Post Reply New Topic

Everyone should read Sun Tzu's The Art of War. "It is only one who is thoroughly acquainted with the evils of war that can thoroughly understand the profitable way of carrying it on." http://www.chinapage.com/sunzi-e.html

Not all NT'z are bullies, im certainly not n im actually one myself, bruv, every one iz different in there own way.
this sort of stuff happens wid everyone not aspies you.

im actually a nice gurl who actually has heart for dis place. but remember dnt let anyone get 2 u... keep strong n stay blessed.

***
mayokka
***

While it's an interesting theory, I've not yet seen any compelling evidence to suggest that all technological development was instigated by aspies. Anyone got something convincing?

Oh, and great post AmberEyes, thanks!

The most important part of the technique is the beginning, even if its the least flashy. If you screw up the beginning, you cannot recover the technique. It will fail. You have to start over.

Same goes for social situations. If you from the very beginning "cut in" just right, you just have to continue riding on that feeling. Your receptors are calibrated properly, and you can trust them to carry you through, if you keep focused enough.

But, if you start off wrong, there's no recovery. You can start off wrong in the first 10 seconds and then spend 5 hours trying to regain your social balance, to no avail. The only place where you can start over is the next social occasion, not the current one.

I've been thinking about this some more, martial arts alot of times are about taking the energy of the other person and using it against them and to your advantage, in al-anon they teach you about letting the energy of the wack-job go or flow 'around' you which is kind of about martial arts in a way

I think honestly the thing I got hung up on was thinking 'social skills' are about relating and truth and having a one track mind about that and that's where I still get hung up. I think I didn't have any context about what it was about...competition, tribal impulses, signaling conformity and pecking order, being emotionally confiscatory, etc, etc, etc. I didn't understand all that...mainly because I didn't have any use for it. I think aspies are kind of "I'm okay/you're okay" or whatever...society is one up/one down and social 'skills' alot of times are used to place yourself in the continuum so people aren't in it to begin with, or want nothing to do with it, aren't going to understand that. I think you can under take a kind of anthropological expedition of social skills, what they are used for, how not to signal incorrectly, etc...but it is still never going to be my world. It's like spelunking or something for me.

Being a martial arts student, I definitely think you can learn social skills like a martial arts. In martial arts you learn a kata - a series of movements one following the other to make up a form. In social skills you learn how to greet people by saying hello and then shaking their hand - one thing following the other.

In martial arts in combat you learn that if someone goes to punch you, you put up a block. You learn the correct technique to respond to what someone might throw out at you. In social skills you learn the appropriate reaction to what someone might do or say. If someone is crying you learn to ask if they are okay or what you can do to help. If it is someone's birthday you learn to say Happy Birthday and ask about what presents they got.

I did thirteen years of drama classes and it was basically like social skills martial arts class. It was fantastic therapy for a kid who just found people scary and didn't know how to react to them. Also, it was a fairly safe environment, you could try out certain responses under the pretense of playing a character and see how people responded to them. Now, I can fake social interaction like an NT even though internally I don't totally understand every nuance of what is going on. Still haven't learnt to enjoy all the small talk and nicieties though. They can't teach that.

In answer to the thread title, I think the answer is that we can, with repetition and practice (like martial arts) improve our social tool kit.

In response to one of the points made in the thread opening question.

I have found a very effective way of dealing with social 'bullies', whether NT or AS.

After they make a sweeping statement, or even just a statement that you find a bit uncomfortable, take ONE word out of their statement and say it back to them.

The word will often be something like, 'ALL', 'NEVER', 'ALWAYS, '(insert racial group, ethnic group, etc)'

Bullies lack provisionality and THIS is one of their achilles heels

Even if the bully doesn't get it, some in the audience might.

If nothing else, you might succeed in punctuating the diatribe, which could come as some relief.

You might find that someone in the group approaches you later, agreeing with your interjection and thanking you for your contribution.

Yes, Zatoichi is fictional and exceptional. He's an exaggeration. I'm not saying we can all be Zatoichi. I just think he's an inspiring character. The point I was fuzzily alluding at is that people with disabilities can learn to compensate. There are real life examples of folks as amazing (or almost) as Zatoichi. I'm minded of a blind kid I once read about who taught himself echo location.

I used to do martial arts until the constantly rising of the YMCA's rent drove us out.

It was very good stimming for me I was aloud to fight people and not get in trouble

Hmmm…
It’s an interesting analogy: learning Martial Arts is like learning social skills.

Martial Arts require physical coordination and motor skills.

I am very out of sync with other people's movements and often had poor physical coordination skills. I wonder if there's a link?

I’ve been reading about the Motor Skills Model of learning social interactions (Argyle 1967). Non-verbal skills (facial expressions/gestures etc.) have motor components.


When people are taught motor skills such as:

-Dance Steps
-Sports skills
-Martial Arts moves

The teacher “breaks down” complex sequences of moves into their component parts, so that the students “digest” the information more easily. Each of the component skills/moves would be practiced separately.

E.g. catching a ball, swinging a racquet, doing a pirouette, performing a high-kick

Then, the teacher would ask the students to chain the different moves together into the required sequence.

I.e. in dance/martial arts, you'd do the turn, then the high kick, then step into "second position"...


I think that this sort of approach would be useful for teaching basic everyday greetings/interaction skills. Basically chaining the individually learned “chunks” until the sequence is complete.

Social skills components are referred to as “Micro-skills” (Kagan 1973; Hayes 2002). These can be verbal (e.g. saying hello in the “appropriate” tone) and non-verbal/kinetic (e.g. waving goodbye).

I’ve read that an individual’s response to an unfolding social situation is regulated by a kind of “Feedback loop”. The Human Sensory motor system monitors incoming sensory information contributing to this loop (Welford 1965).

This loop can is used for self-control/emotional regulation.
It occurred to me, that if there’s too much sensory input/sensory sensitivity, the feedback loop would be difficult to manage and socially calibrate with another person’s.

Social interactions are motivated by a individuals' goals (Hargie 2006). People usually want to get something out of an interaction.


When I was younger, I used Role Player Computer Games to motivate myself to take part in social interactions. These games were very goal orientated. At the time, I treated these games sort of like learning martial arts. In these games the player has to use the characters in the story to help him/her solve puzzles and thus progress through the game. These games taught basic social problem solving skills.

You had to ask characters for objects/advice to help you solve a puzzle. These objects are stored in the player’s inventory. The characters had different temperaments and not all of them were trustworthy or cooperative.

From this experience, I learned that some people might have ulterior motives and wanted to gain something from me at my expense.

I tried to apply what I’d learned in the games to real life social situations. The skills I learned were useful when I had to ask run errands for people and ask for help.


Computer Game Conversation Engines included:

-Multiple Choice questions/answers e.g. Redjack: Revenge of the Brethren

-“A Spookitalk” Chatbot e.g. Starship Titanic


I remember being very polite in these games and saying please and thank you.
I used these games to practice my “Ps and Qs”.

I wonder if perhaps a RPG Computer Game Engine could be adapted to teach social skills?

The program could be like a non-linear, interactive “social storyline”.

I suppose some of the dangers with over-rehearsing learning social skills this way is that real life delivery could sound stilted, and robotic. The interactions could sound scripted and not that spontaneous.

I think that there’s a limit to how this technology could be used to help people to deal with real life fluid and rapidly changing social situations. I suppose that would depend on how advanced the AI of the computer game engine was.

The other danger is that a “social computer game” could be used as a substitute for real social interactions. That’s happened to me in the past.

Ambereyes: take it one stage further. Throw a ball, catch a ball, most of us make a complex calculation without ever realizing we have done it. The parameters of variables that formula remain quite similar even in a flexible, fast flowing game . You can reduce that down to maths.

If you break social interaction down to the level you have described, a similar set of underlying rules reveal. If you can express those rules as formula , not necessarily standard maths , but maybe something else for which you may have to invent an appropriate language ( Like html was "invented" for net) then you have series of constants. These are not the" base" rules, but an expression of an aspect of them.

Once you can formulaically express these rules you can develop software capable of interpreting human behavior more quickly and intuitively and you would have a more interactive AI.

It would also be a good base for working back up to micro-behaviors for "impaired" systems like myself, well, that is until the AI develops in tandem with people more closely related in terms of their mental frameworks.