INTRODUCTION TO AUTISM

1. INTRODUCTION TO AUTISM Rosemary E. Cullain Ph.D. Colorado Training Associates Inc.

2. Training Topics • Characteristics and Implications of ASD • Teaching Strategies • Strategies to Improve Social Interaction • Interventions Related to Sensory Differences

3. Characteristics of Autism • Neurological in origin • Brain Organized Differently • Differences in • social relationships • Communication • Repertoire of behaviors

4. ASD Learning Style Predictable Organized Repetitive One Modality Visual Concrete Rote Over Focus Attention Neuro Typical Style Flexible Dynamic Random Multi Modalities Auditory Social Analytical Shifts Attention Paradox of Autism

5. Differences in These Areas • Thinking • Learning • Sensory

6. Thinking • Details versus concepts • Cause and effect • Irrelevant versus relevant • Concrete versus abstract • Organization and sequencing

7. Sensory • Easily over stimulated • Difficult to modulate • Problems with segmenting • Prefer orderly, predictable, familiar

8. Learning • Visual or Verbal • Poor Imitators • Prompt Dependent • Need meaningful routines and strategies • Need concept of finished

9. Helpful Teaching Interventions • TEACCH Model (Mesibov & Schopler) • Picture Exchange Communication (Bondy & Frost) • Relationship Development Intervention (Gustein & Sheely) • SCERTS (Prizant, Weatherby, Rydell) • Social Communication (Quill)

10. Good Interventions • Alter Environment to make world more meaningful • Based on strengths • Provide physical and visual structure • Provide organization of the day • Work has beginning and end

11. Schedules • Individual to developmental level • Independence is goal • Student manipulates • Resist over prompting • Provides visual system to teach flexibility

12. Issues to Consider with Schedules • Can student match objects, pictures of words – can he read • Can student follow a sequence of activities using a visual cue • Where is the best location • What information is important • Where does he mark off finished work • Who sets up and makes changes

13. Work System • Method for presenting work in an organized systematic way. • System teaches independence • Not just work baskets • Has a definite beginning and end • Can have many faces

14. Questions Work Systems Answer • What do I have to do? • How much do I have to do? • When am I finished? • What do I do next?

15. Sensory Implications • School environments include sensory information that is unfamiliar and different in intensity and duration • Elementary classrooms • furniture • visually distracting • cafeteria smell • noise • Middle/High School • multiple passing periods • Numbers of teachers, styles, expectations • Noise • Myriad of hallways

16. Strategies • Priming • Preview activity • Provides predictability • Reduces anxiety and resulting behaviors • Working Independently • Initial instruction • Provides practice • Adjust if necessary • Access to place apart from routine environment • Positive atmosphere not punishment or escape from tasks • Allows for regrouping, planning, recovery

17. Home Base • Access apart from routine environment • Positive not punitive • Allows person to regroup, plan, recover • Social Stories • Stores from their perspective • Describe social situations • Relevant cues • Visually descriptive less directive • Addresses fears, anxiety obsessions

18. Strategies • Visual Supports • Concrete representation • Reduces ambiguity • Helps anticipate • Organizes physical space • Helps with transition • Helps to understand expectations • Can convey directions

19. Social Developmental Levels Level one: Tuning In (Birth) Emotional Attunement Social Referencing Excitement Sharing

20. Social Developmental Levels Learning To Dance (6 months) • Learns rules, roles and structures of experience sharing • Likes variety • Synchronized actions • Observing and regulating to coordinate.

21. Social Developmental Levels Level 3 Improving and Co –Creating (one year • Constant co variation • Fluid transitions • Improvisation • Co-Creation

22. Social Developmental Levels Level Four Sharing Outside Worlds (18 months) • Perception Sharing • Perspective Taking • Unique Reactions • Adding Imagination

23. Social Developmental Levels Level 5 Discovering Inside Worlds (30 mos) • Sharing Ideas • Enjoying Differences • Inside and Outside Worlds • Primacy of Minds

24. Social Developmental Levels Level 6 Binding Self to Others (48 mos) • Unique Self • Belong to Groups • Pals and Playmates • Enduring Friendships

25. Social Implications for ASD • Most ASD are missing critical parts of the skills in Level 1 • Need to teach those critical parts before kids are ready for groups • Must recognize their social development is different • Must remediate these needs • Plan social demands around those needs • Avoid friendship groups etc until at least level 5

26. Social Teaching Strategy L 1 • Teach child to visually scan adult actions and reactions (use video) • Teach child to reference adults when uncertain or anxious • Teach visual cues that child can recognize as a sign to shift attention • Teach simple games and model excitement for the child to imitate.

27. Social Teaching Strategy L 2 • Teach child to carry out coordinated interactions • Teach child to perform his role in a coordinated interaction • Teach child to time himself to coordinate this interaction • Teach regulation in a social interaction • Teach methods to communicate to maintain coordination in a social interaction.

28. Social Teaching Strategy L 3 • Multi step level • Co-variation (novelty) • Fluid transitions • Improvising • Co creation

29. Social Teaching Strategy L 4-6 • Multi step involving • Joint attention • Perspective Taking • Unique Reactions • Imagination

30. Sample Activities • Level One – Turn taking games • Level Two – Mirror Games • Level Three – Cooperative Games • Level Four – “Sharing” Games • Level Five and Six - Groups

31. This is What we do as Parents and Teachers • The loving mother teaches her child to walk alone. She is far enough from him so that she cannot actually support him, but she holds her arms to him. She imitates his movements, and if he totters she swiftly bends as if to seize him, that the he might believe that he is not walking alone…her face beckons like a reward, an encouragement. Thus, the child walks alone with his eyes fixed on his mother’s face not on the difficulties in his way. He supports himself by the arms that do not hold him and constantly strives toward the refuge in his mother’s embrace, little suspecting that in the very same moment that he is emphasizing his need of her he is proving that he can do without her, because he is walking alone. (Kierkegaard)