The Autism Society Event and Education Recordings Archive

This presentation will offer information on training parents to help their young children with autism develop perspective taking and the capability to talk about what’s going on in the minds of others. This theory of mind development is central to a child’s ability to have successful interpersonal relationships. Videotape examples will illustrate the responsive language strategies developed for TalkAbility™, a new family-centered model of naturalistic intervention for parents of children with high-functioning autism and Asperger syndrome. There is an abundance of research that shows that “parent talk” is crucial to the young child's development of a theory-of-mind (Ruffman et al. 2002). For instance, children whose mothers talk to them about desires, subsequently have a better understanding of mental life and talk more about the thoughts of others. And once children have the language to discuss what's going on in someone else's mind, with words like “he thinks,” or “he knows,” their development of theory-of-mind takes off. Mothers who hear their children use this kind of mental state language pick up on it and use more of this kind of language themselves, giving their children even more models of abstract language from which to learn.

The ability to understand what's on the minds of others doesn't occur spontaneously in children with autism. Since these children are often late to talk and even when verbal, don't use mental state language in their conversations, parents often avoid talking about feelings and thoughts to them, focusing instead on concrete language about the here-and-now. Consequently the children don't receive the very language input that has been shown to contribute to the development of a robust understanding of the mind. In addition, lexical and syntactic knowledge, although a relative strength in these children, is still often significantly delayed especially in the children's use of the words and grammar needed to talk about the mind. Research has shown that when children with autism acquire the structural knowledge of specific language constructions, such as mental state verbs followed by sentential complements, (for example, “He thinks that he's the best player”) they have a way to talk about other people's thoughts, So, unlike the traditional view that language maps onto non-linguistic concepts, these children need the language to better develop the concepts (De Villiers, 2000).

TalkAbility, a new program developed by the Hanen Centre in Toronto for families who have children with high-functioning autism or Asperger syndrome, trains parents as part of this program, to use mental state language when they talk to their young children with autism spectrum disorder. Like all Hanen programs, TalkAbility is based on principles that are consistent with best practice recommendations: involving parents as early as possible in their child's intervention program and facilitating communication in naturalistic contexts. This presentation will describe how parents learn to create and take advantage of everyday opportunities to promote their child's mental language development so that language learning and cognitive development become an ongoing, enjoyable and natural part of the child's life.

The presentation will begin by describing how theory-of-mind develops in young children, starting with the infant's ability to infer meaning to the eye gaze of his mother, followed by the five stages that children gradually master from birth to about six years of age: Stage 1 – understanding wanting when children understand that people want different things; Stage 2 – understanding thinking when children understand people think differently; Stage 3 – understanding that seeing leads to knowing when children understand that seeing something themselves doesn't mean another person can see the same thing; Stage 4 – understanding hidden feelings when children understand that what we say or how we look isn't always the way we feel inside, and; Stage 5 – understanding false beliefs when children understand that people can sometimes think things are true when they're not (Peterson et al, 2005).

Videotape examples will illustrate the responsive language strategies that parents can use to help move their child through the theory-of-mind stages. Since children with autism miss so much early social information because they either don't look at faces or only look at mouths, not eyes, parents learn how to “give their child a hook to look.” They learn to be face-to-face with their child and then give him a reason to look by using some traditional communicative temptations, such as giving items bit by bit or making mistakes on purpose. When their child looks at their faces, parents learn to foster face reading by exaggerating their facial expressions and matching the emotions conveyed through nonverbal communication with the appropriate language.

While it is important for children to both understand and use mental state language, parents concentrate first on fostering their child's receptive language. They learn what to say to their child at each stage and how to say it. For example, a parent who is helping his child move into Stage 2 (understanding thinking) can include and highlight “think” words in his conversation. Based on the ontogenesis of mental state words, parents are encouraged to use “think,” “know” and “forget” first, as in, “Let me think about that,” “I think that will be fun,” “I know you can do it,” or “I forgot where my keys are.”

Parents learn how to use a cluster of strategies to involve their child in conversations about what's on the minds of others. The acronym, “I-Cues,” gives parents an easy way to remember the strategies. The I's (Include your child's interests and words, Interpret the feelings behind nonverbal communication) help parents follow their child's lead so that they can be responsive to him all the time. The Cues (Comment and wait, Ask a question and wait, Suggest and wait, Hint and wait, Tell and wait) signal to their child that the next turn in the conversation is his.

The information in this presentation describes a mediator model of treatment, based on current research taken from the theory-of-mind literature, for a group of children with social communication challenges, for whom professionals have traditionally had difficulty planning remediation.

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