Educational assistance refers to helping adults build their skills through the development of strategies, appropriate instruction and/or accommodations. In Module 3, various strategies for communication and numeracy skills were addressed along with details on how to effectively teach learning strategies.

This module will deal specifically with psychosocial strategies, accommodations and assistive technology. Successful adults with disabilities have identified that the awareness and enhancement of their social skills were the key factors that contributed to their successes. This includes interactions with others, organizational skills and the ability to take control. This clearly points to the need for these skills to be integrated into literacy programs. When social skills are not addressed, it is these factors that often interfere with an adult's success in employment and/or social relationships.

Psychosocial strategies

Social skills

Cognitive processing difficulties can impair an individual's ability to: deal with pressure, change, or criticism; hold conversations; use receptive and expressive language and appropriate humour; be able to make inferences; and be sensitive to others' feelings and moods. These social skills impairments may be reinforced by negative emotions adults may have experienced throughout their school and work histories.³ However, it is important to note this may not be the case for all adults with learning disabilities. In fact, in some cases adults have developed strong social skills to help them compensate for their reading and writing weaknesses.⁴ This reinforces the need for practitioners to recognize the uniqueness of each adult learner, a key principle that has been emphasized throughout the modules.

Challenges with short-term memory, receptive communication, attention and the inability to interpret predisposes adults with learning disabilities to poor social skills. "Common signs of this social disability may include clumsiness, lack of eye contact, asking inappropriate or blunt questions and giving inappropriate responses, poor control of voice volume and tone, failure to take turns in conversation, and difficulty initiating conversation."⁵