Child with ASD often seem to march to the beat of their own drummer. What motivates them, please them, and what interests them can be different from other children. Pleasing the teachers, defying the teachers, impressing other children, mastering new skills, pleasing their parents- these fundamental motivations are not necessarily lacking but may be less pressing in children with ASD. Instead, other motivations may be more pressing, such as being allowed to do their preferred repetitive activities, talking about their favourite subject, or avoiding unpleasant sensor stimulation. In the midst of all these challenges, the child with ASD often has to work extra hard to do what may come easily to the other children. Each child with ASD are also unique by himself/herself, what comes easy for one child with ASD may be slight hard or very hard to another child within this spectrum. Anything involve complex language is likely to require additonal concentration and mental effort in a child who already may be challenged in the area of sustained attention. Is it any wonder, given all these factors, that they may sometimes become noncomplaint, irritable, or shut down and withdrawn? But all is not lost or hopeless if we know how to take steps to troubleshoot their behavior, in helping them to learn more effectively.
Difficulties with attention is one of the most frequently reported problems for children with ASD in the classroom, understanding the attention deficits will help you to intervene in a way that has the best possible chance of working. A good way to describe the attention of a child with ASD is that he has trouble managing it. In other words, he may have difficulty putting his/her attention where it needs to be, he/she may have trouble sustaining his attention or sticking with something once he has started to pay attention to. He/She may have trouble selecting out the important things to pay attention to. He/She may have trouble shifting or moving her attention from one thing to another, or he/she may shift his attention to the new thing, only to derail and move his attention back to something that is more important for her(his own preoccupations, or the last thing he was doing). The description above offers many hypothesis in any behevior problem that hinder join attention.
Having said that, we can perhaps evaluate and analyse the problem behavior by first examine the behavior and then seek to identify the function served by the behavior using this ABC principles of Behavior Analysis:-
1) What are the "A"ntecedents(what comes before the behavior)?
They are analyzed for precipitating factors Eg. what activity or task ...
2) What is the "B"ehavior itself? Mood swing, throwihng tantrum, screaming, melt down, covering ears, flapping/flcikering hands etc...
3) What are the "C"onsequences(what comes after the behavior and may be serving to reinforce and maintain it)? Eg Losing interest & attention, not following agenda etc...
Determining the cause of behavior is critical to developing an effective intervention strategy. It will then allow you to develop appropriate modification to task demands, so we can achieve a win win outcome and help the child cope better into acheieving the goals.
Cognitive Strength & Weakness
Various Aspect Of Learning Challenges & Definitions:-
Language
Phonology – Structural aspect of language, refers to speech sound of language
Ability of a child to discriminate among the sounds that others are making when they are speaking and can she produce the sounds consisently and understandably
Syntax- Grammar
Using and understand word ends and using and understanding correct word order
Prosody- refers to melody of our speech-pitch,volume and rate changes that carry meaning and information, universal impairement a among child with ASD who usually speak with flat monotone
Semantics- refers to meaning of words, relationships among concepts
Ability to reason about the concept , comprehend the meaning in a general way. Child with ASD may lack or misuse of mental state verb such as “think”, “expect”, “hope”, “remember”.
Discourse- refers to ability to put together a higher level of connected speech, such as telling a story. Basic “WH” question is a challenge, Who, What & where are easier with photo level representation as visual aid to help child understand but the more abstract one like When, Why & How will be expected from their level of vocabulary.
Often learn language in a formular way like as a whole chunks rather than putting together new sentences with new words to means new thing
Pragmatics- refer to social use of language which includes analysis of speech acts or functions including things like greeting, commenting, asking questions, answering question, agreeing, requesting, protesting.
Child with ASD use their language more to regulate their environment than to be social.
Written language
Usually their strength in the area of decoding what they read & even spelling
The lack of fine motor skill may be hinderance to their ability to understand what they read and mechanics of writing what they want to say.
In summary, child with ASD has persistent problem with structural aspect of language, they may do well in concrete language but have increasing difficulty as the language becomes more complex, hierarchically organized, abstract or inferential.
Memory
Visual memory- area of strength
Memory for music is sometimes a real talent in children with ASD
Memory for verbal material can be quite difficult, for eg they do not use frame work of the story to help them remember details, but instead remember details in the story as if they were unrelated bits of information.
Sometimes they may show extraordinary memories for certain type of material in particular events and facts in great details. But yet there can be impersonal quality to these memories, as though the child is remembering facts and not recollecting a personal event. And the same child can have trouble remembering something you thought he had learn yesterday. Probably something to do with attention, with what the child consider as important, interesting or easy to remember. The challenge is then in finding a way to make the unusual ability useful in the real world.
Attention-child with ASD have a striking disconnection between their ability to attend to preferred topics or activities(where attention span could be relatively long) and their ability(desire) to attend to non-preferred activities.
-Motivation is crucial in helping them optimize their attention when performing task which they may not intrinsically interested/enjoy.
-Make material as interesting as possible, keep requirements for sustain attention a reasonable level and use external reinforcers as necessary(not necessary candy, but checks list, stickers, opportunities to earn a preferred object or activity)
Some help to focus child attention includes:-
-Using hands on activities
-Relating the material to subjects of interest to the child
-Giving imtermittent brief motor break(running an errand, erase board)
-Anticipating a simple quiz with opportunities to earn powerful reinforcer for good performance.
Executive Function-refers to cognitive and decision making activities just like an head of a organization include processes as:-
- organizing task in proper sequence
- suppressing inappropriate or irrelevant response/distraction
- Keep attention to the task in hand
- Putting forth mental effort or concentration on a task over a sustained time/duration
- Initiating problem solving activities/request for help
- Holding one part of information in mind while working on another so the two can put together at the end
- Calling to mind previously learned information without any cues or prompts
- Working for reward that is in the future instead of doing what brings immediate gratification
Most of these functions depend heavily on the frontal lobes of the brain, and depending on the age and intellectual capacity of the child, our job is to serve as the child frontal lobes(helping her to organize and inhibit by setting up external structure) or to help her develop strategies to do these things for himself.
Visual spatial skill-refers to skill that require you to perceive basic visual element(shapes, colors,movements) as well as relationships among them. In additional with motor component such as cutting out shape, copy words or designs, quickly moving pegs fr one hole to another, completing puzzle,hitting a ball.
Social Cognition-refers to understanding the social world
-Ability of a child to grasp what others are feeling, understand why they feel and behave as they do, and understand what is the expected of him.
Components include:-
Processing faces
-only recognize exaggerated expression of emotion to happiness, fear,sadness or anger.
- focus on unusual aspect of the picture such as hairline or mouth or an object in the back ground,rather than scanning the character’s eye for clues to their emotions and reaction.
Empathy- understanding and recognizing his own and other emotion with correct response. If a child may understand someone’s else emotion, he may not respond automatically with the correct response. Eg teacher suddenly has bleeding from nose, he may smile to response to his empathy rather than feeling shock and scare.
-Need to help her recognize and label his own emotion in relationship to child capacity for empathy.
Theory Of Mind- refers to the understanding we have of others’s mind, very often this is absence in child with ASD where they perceive and take it/response literally as what he perceive and not thinking about what others may think differently from the situation.
Friendship- children with ASD often have immature and oversimplified notions of friendship.
They may think that anyone they know or have played with once is a friend, not understanding that true friendships prefer each other because of common interests, feel positive emotion when interacting and share special bonds of confidence and trust.
- duties of parents and trs to cooperate in picking some likely children who share specific interest with the child to seek friendship
- need coaching in group interaction for turns taking, social rules reinforcement
Motor Skill – may be clumsy and uncoordinated with fine motor skill resulting in poor hand writing, coloring and drawing and manipulating objects in hands on lesson
Splinter Skill-area of ability that are above what the child can do in other areas
-Special talent
- some children can use written words or sentence as a gateway for communication.
Hope this sharing can create a good initial insights into understand children with ASD. Every child within this spectrum is unique, and hence has different need. Knowing more to understand individual needs of the child will help each parents, caregivers, teachers & therapist to cope better in managing the best outcome.
Winners Statement:-
"A hug is a smile with arms, a laugh with a stronger grip." ~ Terri Guillemets
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