ASD

Educator’s Guide to ASD

Common characteristics of ASD:

• Five major common characteristics: (a) trouble understanding social cues and conversations; (b) inflexible adherence to routines/rituals; (c) repetition of movements or words/phrases; (d) hyperreactivity or hyporeactivity to sensory input; (e) persistent preoccupation with certain objects/topics.
• Other common characteristics: (a) they don’t learn from watching others around them but from applying inflexible and universal social rules to all situations; (b) struggle with abstract concepts (e.g., metaphors, sarcasm, rhetorical questions); (c) struggle coping when stressed; (d) struggle generalizing and applying the knowledge and skills they learn across situations, settings, and people; (e) struggle with perspective-taking; (f) struggle with motor skills.

Sensitive terminology: student with autism, not autistic student.

Strategies:

• Allow extra time.
• Routines: stick to routines, provide advanced warning for changes in routines. 
• Incorporate student preferences into activities to decrease stress. 
• State the obvious: explicitly state why you’re doing what you’re doing. 
• 4:1 ratio of praise to corrective feedback.
• Lots of visuals.
• Pair student with a “buddy” who can help them out, look out for them. Also educate other students about ASD.
• Social supports: video modeling, role-playing, direct instruction, social stories, cartooning, power cards. See Appendix D.

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Social Explorer's Curriculum

How social thinking develops in typically developing children

Children with social learning challenges: either neglected when young (under-stimulated) or born with neurological impediments.

Shared emotions happen early in life: e.g., infants know how to feel by watching their parents' faces; baby coos and mom smiles, baby frowns and mom frowns; something scary happens and baby looks at mom's face to see if things are okay. Eye-contact occurs as early as 3-4 months. Eye gaze for engagement evolves into instrumental eye gaze designed to accomplish a goal. Infants are able to imitate facial expressions. Babies at 14 months able to recognize when they are being imitated. Theory of mind develops: e.g., baby tastes something bitter, makes face; later sees adult make same face, infers that they ate something bitter.

Joint attention: at 9 months, babies will follow the head turn of others to see what they're looking at even if that person's eyes are close; at 10-11 months they will only look at that object if the other person's eyes are open. At 12 months, babies learn about pointing, that they can direct someone's attention by pointing to something. By 18 months they understand that they might have different desires than others.

Cooperation: develops at 14-18 months; involves shared goals, shared attention, shared plan, ability for perspective-taking. Babies as young as 20 months show an innate desire to cooperate and help.

Self-regulation and executive functioning. EF skills enables us to set a goal, plan for goal, accomplish goal. Self-regulation skills allow us to carry through with our goals. Toddlers at 2 years begin to set goals. At 3 years children should have the self-control skills needed to participate in a group.

Theory of mind. Children at 4 have a theory of mind, understand that they have different thoughts than others.

Cooperative play involves acting out a pretend episode and the ability to make sense of what your play partner is doing. Children develop the ability to read the plan of another at 24 months. Cooperative play = playing with others. Collaborative play = make a joint plan, share their imagination with the other. Types of play:

• Solitary pretend play, 19-22 months
• Parallel play (I am aware you are doing things and I am doing things but we are not interacting)
• Associative play, 24-36 months (when a group of toddlers are all doing the same thing, sharing materials, or hanging out in the same play area, but there is no planning or dialogue about who will do what and who will play which role)
• Neurotypical learners at age 4 are able to share in the imagination of others, build on their ideas, etc. They have the flexibility needed to incorporate the ideas of others into their own play scheme.