Social behaviour includes a wide variety of skills.  In order to interact with another person an individual needs to be motivated to start an interaction, have the skills to engage another person, be able to maintain the interaction, think about another person’s intentions and interests and end the interaction at an appropriate time.

There are a number of subtle social skills that help to streamline social interaction such as maintaining an appropriate level of eye contact, using gestures to supplement the interaction, or using pointing, giving or showing to share attention with others.  An individual may have particular strengths and weaknesses in one or more than one of these areas.  Understanding what these strengths and weaknesses are means that a person can be supported in the best possible way.

People with particular genetic syndromes are more likely to show certain social behaviours. Some of these behaviours are related to social difficulties, and can make certain day to day social situations quite distressing and unpredictable. Researchers are interested in learning what situations are related to these difficulties, and what causes these underlying difficulties in each syndrome group.  Understanding these differences means better opportunities to develop tailored strategies and interventions aimed to help those with different syndromes to overcome specific difficulties.

For example, previous research has shown that people with CdLS and FXS show social and communication difficulties and are more likely to hit criteria in assessments of autism.  However, even the social difficulties that these two groups show differ subtly between one another and also between autistic people. Therefore, it is very important to understand the social profile of a syndrome group.

You can read more about social profiles in each syndrome group by clicking on the links below:

Angelman

Cornelia de Lange

Cri du Chat

Previous research has found that autistic people who experience social interaction differences, have shown differences in their brain activity from people without autism when watching and listening to social information.

This suggests they may have neurological differences that may make processing and understanding social situations more difficult for these individuals. As people with different syndromes have different social behaviours and difficulties, we think that may also show differences in brain activity which impacts on how individuals process information.