Tool Tuesday: A Fresh Take on Social Scales

For many years, SLP and social educator Anna Vagin has provided a wealth of resources that overlap wonderfully with MindWing’s methodologies in narrative language development. Through her website workshops, and terrific FREE mailing list, she shares connections to fostering conversational language, using engaging contexts such as games and animations to build social cognition, and recently, a new perspective on using visually supportive cognitive/emotional scales.

Scales are a tried-and-tested tool for expanding thinking, linked to counseling approaches such as Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy (CBT), Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT). and Motivational Interviewing (MI). Historically, they have too often been used to invalidate students’ thoughts and feelings and tell them what they should think about a particular situation. Anna has produced a set of example scales that are oriented on an errorless, neurodiversity-affirming trajectory, and provide adaptable “menus” of how children (and adults, not incidentally) can look at their daily experiences.

Anna provides an introduction to her scales as follows, stressing that there is no correct or incorrect end of the continuum of thinking and feeling:

The complexities of social engagement reflect dynamic, and often shifting, aspects of human interaction. Social interaction offers opportunities for lifelong learning and personal growth, as each individual defines them. A strength-based approach, as well as the integration of self-determined goals—for which progress is measured via individual change, rather than forced to meet a pre-determined level based in neurotypical standards—must be part of our clinical process. SocialScales are meant to present options and possibilities, NOT requirements.

Her resource provides example scales in areas such as flexibility, resilience, motivation and resilience, cooperation and getting along, new experiences, social engagement, winning and losing, fairness, and social media and texting. All are given in an editable format, as it can really help to engage students in changing language about thinking or feeling, so that it is most meaningful to them.

Anna’s scales serve as another excellent overlap with Story Grammar Marker® in particular, as each is a unique space for students to share narratives related to the social and/or executive function context. As Anna herself often notes in her newsletters, just seeing and discussing the range of thoughts and feelings connected to a potentially challenging area of life, often allows them to SHIFT to a more flexible place.

Here is an example related to work I have done with an individual student, though the scales are also great for gathering and comparing the thoughts and experiences of a group. Anna’s material comes to us through Google Slides and provides an elegant space where we can type stories, or interpret the scale according to features. For example, regarding motivation in response to tasks, we might illuminate for students the factors that influence their reactions (difficulty of task, time to perform, subject area, etc.).

For this student, a discussion with his dad indicated that his response to household responsibilities was a challenge. Over successive weeks and using Story Grammar Marker® icons, we reviewed a few scenarios he shared. Key to one scenario was the perspective-taking aspect that his dad had to perform multiple Actions (asking him repeatedly to clear the dishwasher) and had a THOUGHT BUBBLE of disbelief that the task could have been completed in between asks! In another scenario, it was helpful to scaffold the student’s story vs that of his dad; story elements included how his thoughts/feelings might change toward completing the asked task after sinking into the couch, and what might be dad’s thoughts on the timing of the request.

You can find more information, examples, and a link to obtain these resources on Anna’s Social Scales page.