Social skill and aging: principles and problems

Over the last two decades it has become increasingly recognized that concepts of skill, formulated originally for sensory-motor tasks such as industrial operations, can be applied to interaction between people. The need for social skills in the interactions between old people, their contemporaries, and younger people with whom they have contact, are explored, and suggestions are made for training social skills in order to improve human relations with and between the elderly. It is also argued that present ideas, favoring opportunities for older people to live in communities with those of like mind, can lessen the need for social skills by reducing the social demands of institutional living.