Social Communication Disorder
Social communication disorder (SCD) is characterized by persistent difficulties with the use of verbal and nonverbal language for social purposes. Primary difficulties may be in social interaction, social understanding, pragmatics, language processing, or any combination of the above. Social communication behaviors such as eye contact, facial expressions, and body language are influenced by sociocultural and individual factors. There is a wide range of acceptable norms within and across individuals, families, and cultures. Specific communication challenges may become apparent when difficulties arise in the following:
- communicating for social purposes in ways that are appropriate for the particular social context
- changing communication to match the context or needs of the listener
- following rules for conversation and storytelling
- understanding nonliteral or ambiguous language
- understanding that which is not explicitly stated
- sentence grammar and lexical semantics
- inferential language
- discourse comprehension
- misinterpretation of contextual meaning