Nesrhtens…..

Learning in regular education and the mainstream classroom often pose a great challenge for children with autism spectrum disorders. There are of course many and different reasons for this, varying from child to child and from school to school. But one of the challenges may be failure to learn from observating others.

Observational learning involves learning from observing others behaviors and contingencies, and differs from imitation in that it also involves observating the discriminative stimuli and the reinforcers.

Even if schools have changed, children are often required to acquire knowledge by observational learning. And for those children with autism showing difficulties in acquiring new skills by this will struggle to effective participate and learn in the regular classroom.

There has been published much on observational learning in general, but it seems like that there is few published studies on promoting observational learning per se for preschool children with autism within the EIBI litterature (as I have been able to track). Some children master this form of learning without special interventions at some point during EIBI, but again some children seems to struggle even if they have reached a skill level matching their classmates. Experience shows that unless these children get extra teaching and training on observation learning there may be additional challenges in school.

So each assessment protocoll and curriculum for preschool children should include measures and objectives related to observational learning.

There has long been a common view among some researchers and practitioners in autism that ABA and TEACCH are to totally different approaches in education and treatment for young children with autism, and there has been much focus on whats constitutes the best educational approach. And several reports has showed that early and intensive behavioral interventions have a strong research base (National Autism Centre, 2009).

Callahan and colleagues have recently published an article in Journal of Autism and other Developmental Disorders with the purpose to investigate the social validation of the shared evidence-based practices inherent within the ABA and TEACCH approaches. They also seeked to investigate the comprehensiveness and fidelity of these models.

They did get experts to define intervention components within each treatment and witch was “common” for both approaches. Their social validity investigating showed that “the autism treatment components that were determined to be inherent within both the ABA and TEACCH approaches were rated as more socially valid than either approach alone”

They further write that “A preliminary analysis of the interventions representing both models (our ‘‘Both ABA and TEACCH’’ category) demonstrates a balanced variety of recommended activities including both general best practices (e.g., ensuring teachers are knowledgeable, experienced, and qualified in autism) as well as very specific curricula, materials, and techniques (e.g., the use of specialized strategies to teach social skills). The effective implementation of these items, in concert with specific ABA or TEACCH components (based on the skills, experiences, and desires of the parents and professionals implementing them), would arguably result in the most effective outcomes possible“.

This may be an argument for applying eclectic educational approaches, witch lack scientific support. So I do this statement may be somewhat much from investigating social validity….

The revision of DSM to the next version, the DSM-V is in progress. As a matter of fact it has been in progress for about 11 years…. According to the APA web-site this work started as early as 1999. Anyway the draft is now published online, and the discussion has begun immediately. And the on of the hot discussions that has been flourishing online is the new criteria for autistic disorders (autism spectrum disorders).

The new criteria includes only two domains, the DSM-IV had three. The proposal has combined the old communication and social interaction domains into a new one that’s termed “Clinically significant, persistent deficits in social communication and interactions”. I think that merging those to domains int a new one is logical both from a theoretical view and from the viewpoint of a practitioner. To distinguish between communication and social interaction may be possible, but it´s not really useful. Communication is so closely linked and are a integrated part of social interaction, so the impairments in communications and social interactions are overlapping. This new domain seem to give more sense both in the diagnostic process, and in creating understand for the deficits persons with autism spectrum disorders experience.

Probably the most controversial in the new proposal for autism spectrum disorders is to include Asperger syndrome into the autistic disorder, and so Asperger Syndrome cease to exits as a diagnosis. From my point of view this is an excellent development. The core deficits for the spectrum is common, and thereby the term should be common. The long lasting debate on what separates “high-functioning autism” and Asperger syndrome has also been a dead end. In spite of much research and theoretical speculations the separating features of the two is still not clear, and points in direction of a common disorder.

But of course, I see the problem arising for those individuals that has been diagnosed with Asperger disorder. Do they stop having Asperger syndrome? Many individuals has build an identity around the Asperger diagnosis, and are not comfortable with being labeled as having autism spectrum disorder. But of course, they stay the same persons. People do not become their diagnosis. They are foremost individuals, with some deficits that have a label….

Day one of the ABAI´s autism conference included many interesting speakers providing useful information. But as all presenters provided usefull information, som of them caught my interest more than others.

The first speaker of the day, was dr. Remmington providing some really interesting information on family factors and EIBI. He showed from both his own reserach and others how families are affected by doing EIBI. This surely will inspire to take more of the family factors into consideration in service provision.

Dr. Lerman highlighted some useful aspects of data collection in Discrete-Trail Teaching, focusing on differences on using continuous and discontinuous data collection. She showed interesting examples on difference on several aspects with the two data-collection methods. She summarized by recommending continuous data collection if you have the time and ease…..

And the talk Dr. Gregory Hanley gave on identifying effective and preferred behavior-change programs was great. Giving some wake-up calls on social validity and preference assessment of interventions. He presented some really interesting and important research, that should help professionals to assess social validity with the receivers of intervention.

Day two also held some interesting presentations. For me dr. Saunders talk on discrete trail teaching was interesting. It’s always nice to get updates on some of the basic research. And even if not so related to my practice the talks on feeding problems and health conditions in relation to problem behaviors were good ones as well.

On my way to Chicago to attend the autism conference, I am preparing by looking av the second poster session and picking what posters to surly visit. And so far this is the one I´m going to stop by:

Matching to Receptive Skill Transfer by Kelly Stone, Echoic to Mand Transfer by Dana Pallegrino, Echoic to Mand Transfer by Josef Shane, Using Errorless Learning to Evaluate the Rate of Skill Acquisition in Teaching Children With Autism by Hanna Wolde, Training Yes-No Responses to Children with Autism: A Systematic Replication by Melissa Otto, Using Video Modeling to Teach Children with Autism to Respond to Facial Expressions by Judah Axe, Increasing Functional Play Skills in Children Diagnosed with Autism Using Stereotypy as Reinforcement by Jaqueline Potter, The Effects of Reinforcement Rate on the Spontaneous Request in a Child With Autistic Spectrum Disorder (ASD): Analysis by Behavior Momentum by Kosuke Takahashi, and Improving the Implementation of Discrete Trial Teaching Maximizes Learning Opportunities in Children with Autism by Audrey Alberstadt. These poster seems to be interesting in relation to my daily work implementing EIBI-program for children with ASD.

Using Mobile Phone Technology to Teach Children With Autism to Seek Assistance When Lost by Nicola Hardy, A Comparison of Written and iPod-delivered Schedules for Increasing Independent Task Initiation and Completion by Tori Van Laarhoven, and The Effectiveness of Using an iPod Touch to Teach Cleaning Skills: Fading from Video to Picture/Audio prompts by Justin Olson. These most because I´m interesting in the use of technology in treatment and education for children with autism.

I´m looking forward to it….