Why do Visual Supports Help Individuals with Autism?

Toddler PECS Book

Visual supports are things you can see.  They include body language, natural environmental cues, schedules and calendars as well as things that are specifically designed to meet an individuals specific needs.  Visual supports allow individuals with communicative disorders such as autism, organic brain syndrome and developmental disabilities enhance their ability to communicate and understand what is expected of them.  Through the use of communicative aids individuals with autism can enhance their ability to communicate with people in their circle, improve effective receiving of information as well as processing information.  Visual cues are also important aides to promote independence and provide a means to allow individuals to express themselves in more appropriate ways.

• Body Language includes: Communicative messages are affected by the use of natural body language and help clarify messages.  The ability to understand the body’s natural signals can significantly affect an individual’s ability to understand others communicative message.
  

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• Facial expressions.
• Where the body is in location and orientation to the environment.
• The way a person stands.
• The movement a person makes in relation to their body.
• It includes reaching, touching and pointing at things.
• The way you look at someone, eye contact, the shift in eye gaze.

• Natural Environmental Cues: There are many natural cues around us.  It is important to be able to interpret their meanings in relation to the environment to help us function more effectively as well as more independently in the world around us.
  • The way we arrange our environment such as furniture.
  • The way people or objects move throughout the environment.
  • Signs, signals and other printed items that direct, or provide information.
  • Written or visual messages that provide instructions, choices or even menus at restaurants.

Activity Schedules

• Organizational materials that provide information: people have many ways of organizing their lives through the use of visual or supportive aides.  Teaching an individual with special needs strategies for organizing and communicating more effectively give them more independence in life.
  • Calendars and daily planners.
  • Guides for television or movie theaters.
  • Shopping list.
  • Maps to negotiate through their environment.
  • Items like telephone books and other aids to find things.
  • How to do instructions like cooking receipts and working a DVD player.

Specially Designed Tools to Meet Specific Needs: Many people use tools such as these in their daily life to help keep them organized and prepared for each day.  Individuals with autism need the same thing but changed to meet their specific needs.  It may mean changing the visual support to pictures, breaking down the task to smaller steps or providing communication aides to help them express their needs.  Through the use of visual supports, individuals with autism as well as other communicative disorders can learn, grow and move through their world more independently.

Join us through Communication A to Z as we continue to cover many topics such as visual supports, communication, positive behavior supports, education as well as parent advocacy just to name a few.  Let us know if you are interested in a specific area as well.  We are here to help.

Why do Visual Supports Help Individuals with Autism?

Toddler PECS Book

Visual supports are things you can see.  They include body language, natural environmental cues, schedules and calendars as well as things that are specifically designed to meet an individuals specific needs.  Visual supports allow individuals with communicative disorders such as autism, organic brain syndrome and developmental disabilities enhance their ability to communicate and understand what is expected of them.  Through the use of communicative aids individuals with autism can enhance their ability to communicate with people in their circle, improve effective receiving of information as well as processing information.  Visual cues are also important aides to promote independence and provide a means to allow individuals to express themselves in more appropriate ways.

• Body Language includes: Communicative messages are affected by the use of natural body language and help clarify messages.  The ability to understand the body’s natural signals can significantly affect an individual’s ability to understand others communicative message.
  

  Social Stories

• Facial expressions.
• Where the body is in location and orientation to the environment.
• The way a person stands.
• The movement a person makes in relation to their body.
• It includes reaching, touching and pointing at things.
• The way you look at someone, eye contact, the shift in eye gaze.

• Natural Environmental Cues: There are many natural cues around us.  It is important to be able to interpret their meanings in relation to the environment to help us function more effectively as well as more independently in the world around us.
  • The way we arrange our environment such as furniture.
  • The way people or objects move throughout the environment.
  • Signs, signals and other printed items that direct, or provide information.
  • Written or visual messages that provide instructions, choices or even menus at restaurants.

Activity Schedules

• Organizational materials that provide information: people have many ways of organizing their lives through the use of visual or supportive aides.  Teaching an individual with special needs strategies for organizing and communicating more effectively give them more independence in life.
  • Calendars and daily planners.
  • Guides for television or movie theaters.
  • Shopping list.
  • Maps to negotiate through their environment.
  • Items like telephone books and other aids to find things.
  • How to do instructions like cooking receipts and working a DVD player.

Specially Designed Tools to Meet Specific Needs: Many people use tools such as these in their daily life to help keep them organized and prepared for each day.  Individuals with autism need the same thing but changed to meet their specific needs.  It may mean changing the visual support to pictures, breaking down the task to smaller steps or providing communication aides to help them express their needs.  Through the use of visual supports, individuals with autism as well as other communicative disorders can learn, grow and move through their world more independently.

Join us through Communication A to Z as we continue to cover many topics such as visual supports, communication, positive behavior supports, education as well as parent advocacy just to name a few.  Let us know if you are interested in a specific area as well.  We are here to help.

What are Visual Supports and How do They Work

We all use schedules to keep up with our lives and keep up on track. For a child with a developmental disability there is no difference.  An activity schedule is a set of pictures or words that cues someone to follow a sequence of activities. These activities can take many things and encompass any part of the day. When a schedule needs to be broken down even smaller a task analysis can be used. An activity scheduled can be very detailed or general depending on the needs of the individual.

The goal of using a schedule board is to promote independent, reduce anxiety and allow the individual to understand what is expected of them. Many special needs individuals do not understand time in space, an activity schedule can help them learn a sequence of events that must be finished to get to an item on their board. This helps them learn to transition as well as wait for things going on in their life.

Schedule boards can be set up many ways. They can use check marks to let the person known when he has completed a task. A symbol can be taken to the desired area so they know where they are supposed to go at a certain time, likes stations in a classroom. They can also be put in an envelope when they are done so it is out of the way and the next item can be focused on.

Any way you do it, an activity schedule helps promote independence, decrease stress from transitions and helps the student understand what is expected of them.

What is a Picture Exchange Communication System (PECS)

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The Picture Exchange Communication System or PECS approach is a modified applied behavior analysis program designed for early nonverbal symbolic communication training. Although not created to promote speech many found that indirectly some children began to spontaneously begin to use speech.  PECS begins by teaching individuals through discrete trials to initiate communication in to obtain desired items and then generalize what they have learned to other areas using naturalistic teaching.  PECS’s training occurs during typical activities within the natural settings of the classroom home and in the community. Through a series of phases students are taught to communicate using the PECS system within a broader positive behavioral support using ABA strategies that include chaining, shaping, prompting/cuing, modeling, and environmental engineering. The ultimate goal is to teach the student to spontaneously initiate communicative exchanges.

Understanding Functional Communication Training (FCT)

Functional communication training (FCT) looks to establish an appropriate communicative behavior as a replacement to a challenging behavior the individual uses to attain what they want. Through the use of reinforcing appropriate communicative interactions such as asking for a break when they feel overwhelmed and need to escape to a more effective socially accepted wanted behavior, over time the reduction or elimination of the challenging behavior can be obtained.   FCT can involve the use of Picture Exchange Communication Systems (PECS), Visual supports, and communicative aids, etc to promote more appropriate ways of communication their needs.  The overall goal of FCT is to teach the individual more appropriate alternative ways of expressing themselves as well as providing them better social and coping skills that promote choice, independence and community integration and lead to lasting change they can use throughout their life.

What are Functional Life Skills

Functional curriculum are those skills that significantly affect quality of life of an individual in the community around them.  Individuals with developmental disabilities have significant delays in learning life skills and extra care is needed to address these areas to ensure each individual reaches their full potential as active participants in home, school and community environments.

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Functional life skills include but are not limited to:

• Personal care skills like dressing, bathing and toileting.
• Domestic skills like shopping and managing a home.
• Recreational skills like entertaining friends, going bowling or a party in the neighborhood.
• Community skills like crossing the street, using sidewalks and using public transportation.
• Employment which includes knowing how to apply for and maintain a job.
• Behavior management such as knowing how to regulate your feelings and appropriate ways to engage others around you.
• Academic skills which may need to be modified or extra instruction provided for the student to participate within an inclusive setting while still receiving the necessary support in functional life skills they need.

Pivotal Response Training (PRT)

Pivotal Response Training (PRT) is a loosely structured form of ABA which relies on naturalistic opportunities and naturally occurring consequences to increase generalization, increase spontaneity, increase motivation while reducing prompt dependence often seen in more contrived teaching modalities.  Research has shown that naturalistic teaching formats increase motivation because they promote child choice, turn-taking, and reinforcing initiation of learning events.  PRT also works to target deficit areas often seen in children with autism such as increasing language skills, play skills and social behavior.

Discrete Trial Teaching (DTT)

Discrete Trial Teaching (DTT) is a specific format of teaching using the principles of Applied Behavior Analysis. DTT breaks down skills into clear beginnings and endings sequences that can then provide multiple opportunities to practice each part of the skill until mastery is obtained. Through the use of prompting and reinforcement, children learn individual skills which are then combined into more complex repertoires such as brushing teeth, making their bed or any number of functional or academic skills. Research has proven that DTT is an effective method in teaching new or emerging skills to children with autism and related disorders that can later be generalized in all areas of their lives.

What is a Positive Behavior Support

Positive behavior supports work in unison with functional behavior analysis.  The goal is to bring about positive behavior change while reducing unwanted behaviors.

• Strategies for formulating a positive behavior support plan
• Look to modifying the environment, curriculum or activity to help the individual be successful and reduce the need for the unwanted behavior.
• Teach a new skill to replace the unwanted behavior such as asking for a break instead of hitting.
• Remember that positive behavior supports are a team effort.  Everyone is a team and must work together to meet the persons needs.
• Be consistent.  Consistency is the key to remediation of unwanted behaviors and the promotion of more appropriate behaviors.  If the child learns he will not get what he wants with the unwanted behavior and received the desired item with the desired behavior they will learn to use the appropriate interaction.  If they are able to get what they want occasionally using the unwanted behavior they will continue to use what they know in the past has worked for them.

All Behaviors Serve a Function

It is important to understand the intent of the behavior before applying the appropriate intervention.

In determining the function you need to understand the antecedent (what precedes the behavior), the behavior (the actual behavior itself), and the consequence (what they get or avoid from the behavior).  This is the best way to reduce or increase the behavior in question.

Behaviors do not develop in a vacuum nor do they maintain themselves without underlying causes that continue to reinforce their usefulness.  Behaviors occur for four reasons:

Sensory/Neurological:   The individual is looking for sensory feed through their behavior.	Escape:   To get out of or away from a situation, person or activity.
Attention:   To gain the attention of another.	Tangible:   To get something they want or feel they need.

Using research based proven technologies, a FBA looks beyond the behavior itself to identify possible antecedents or consequences that directly relate to the behavior itself.  Once the reason for a behavior is identified interventions can be implemented to either reduce or increase the behavior in question.