The Autism Society Event and Education Recordings Archive

Most children learn to understand their own feelings and feelings of others through incidental learning. Children with autism have difficulty in this area as one of their core challenges. Understanding feelings is one component of the language of social success and for learning to regulate ones own behavior. Instruction in feelings should include instruction in the reading of facial and body expressions, key components of nonverbal communication. Effective tools for teaching social and behavioral skills are imbedded in this presentation. Imagine the following famous people as students on your school assessment roster:

·        Thomas Jefferson

·        Albert Einstein

·        Marie Curie

·        Paul Robeson

·        Gregor Mendel

·        Carl Sagan

·        Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

You would hope the level of achievement that these people have achieved would have had a significant positive impact on your school assessment scores.  Did you know that these famous people had social skills similar to those of people with autism spectrum disorders?  Researcher, Norm Ledgin, in his book “Asperger’s and Self-Esteem” identified this information.  Some of the characteristics our famous people had that might interfere with success in school and lead to behavior issues include:

·        Greeting dignitaries while wearing odd, frayed, clothing, worn-down bedroom slippers, uncombed hair and at times a pet mockingbird perched on his shoulder

·        Having no friends and rarely mixing with other children his age

·        If something caught his interest he had the “concentration of a watchmaker” and a “laser like ability to focus”

·        Habitually repeating teachers’ questions before replying

·        Dropping out of high school

·        Cutting classes regularly

·        Wouldn’t let anyone tell him a thing

·        Uncombed hair

·        Unconcerned about appearance

·        Lack of a tactful manner for interacting with teachers in early years and interacting with acquaintances throughout his life.

·        Antagonistic style of behavior

·        Introverted

·        Quick to scold

·        Troublemaker at school, annoyingly egotistical

When you compare the history of some of our famous figures to the struggles some of our students with autism you see the need for instruction beyond the prescribed curriculum.  Instructional strategies to address the issues that students with autism spectrum disorders face, due to the nature of the disorder, that impacts their educational achievement will help these students achieve greater success.   Autism is an impairment of social interactions.  Wing and Gould (1979) described the difficulties characteristic of autism as a “triad of impairments”.  The impairments all have a fundamental social nature and are defined as:

·        Impairment of social interaction

·        Impairment of social communication

·        Impairment of social imagination, flexible thinking and imaginative play

Autism is a spectrum disorder and increasing numbers of children with this condition are being served in mainstream classes.  Children identified with Asperger syndrome, an autism spectrum disorder, have three key areas of behavioral disruption according to Dr. Marilyn Monteiro.  The area effecting social relating and emotional responses is often display by the following characteristics:

·        Elevated anxiety level

·        Poor quality eye contact

·        Nonverbal cues not used or understood to regulate social exchanges

·        May have a desire for friendships but lacks necessary social skills to maintain peer relationships

·        Facial expression generally neutral

·        Socially naïve

·        Acts like a younger child

·        Difficulty expressing feelings

·        Has angry outbursts when overwhelmed

·        Transitions are difficult

·        Behaviors are more pronounced during les structured times (PE, lunch, recess, music, passing periods)

Dr. Monteiro recommends teaching social skills to students through their IEPs with an emphasis on teaching replacement behaviors, both verbal and non-verbal.  Students with autism require direct instruction and practice in generalizing the skills to other environments where those skills will be used.  Dr. Monteiro has also recommended the use of the Skillstreaming model as a basis for a social skills training model for students with autism spectrum disorders.

Mesibov, Shea and Adams (2001) emphasize the importance of teaching social skills to students with autism.  Friendship skills and appropriate behavior in social situations are areas of significant difficulty for children with autism.  Children with autism do not pick up the unstated rules of social interactions so they require instruction as part of their IEP.  They suggest the following skills may need to be addressed:

·        Waiting

·        Taking turns at being first

·        Taking turns making decisions about what to play/do

·        Joining in a conversation or activity with other children

·        Taking turns in a conversation

·        Working/playing quietly

·        Accepting not winning

Dr. Michael Powers, (2002) states learning rules is not enough for students with Asperger syndrome.  Following are his recommendations for teaching social skills to children with autism.  Several steps:

1. Identify specific skill or behavior: Ecological inventory
2. Determine time and place for initial instruction (small setting or 1 to 1)
3. Break the skill into small steps, teaching from part to whole, staying concrete and avoiding abstract or nonliteral interpretations and concepts
4. Expand and generalize to real-world experiences
1. Practice in new places
2. Cue cards or reminders

Elementary level:

• Monitoring and displaying emotion
• Smiling and nodding appropriately
• Recognizing facial expressions in others that suggest mood
• Understanding basic social rules
• Speaking politely to adults
• Not pushing in line
• Asking for food politely
• Responding appropriately to conversational attempts by others
• Develop a written list of attributes as reference for conversation topics
• A friend just met
• Favorite television program
• Family members
• Pets, etc.
• Knowing some appropriate leisure skills other than particular interest
• Listening to music
• Swimming
• Hiking
• Limiting obsessive rule-enforcing and accepting that one doesn’t have to be right all the time
• Practice phrases to use instead of outbursts

Duke, Nowicki and Martin (1996) describe the fourth critical “r” for education, other than the three basics of reading writing and arithmetic as relationships.  The rules for relationships are necessary to make the people around us comfortable and to help our students “fit in” to society.   We operate on a grammar of unwritten nonverbal language that has its own set of rules called residual rules.  While unwritten we must learn these rules to be successful and make people around us comfortable.  For some people this may require formal instruction.  Duke, Nowicki and Martin (1996, pg. 5) identified the following six areas as the language of relationships:

• Paralanguage: all aspects of sound that communicate emotion and are used independently or with words.  Whistling, humming, tone, and loudness of voice.
• Facial expressions: Effective eye contact and appropriate use of facial expressions like smiling are two of the most frequently noted characteristics of socially adept children.
• Postures and Gestures: Gestures and postures can convey messages that may conflict with words and confuse communications efforts.
• Interpersonal Distance (Space) and Touch:  Personal space and unwritten rules of touch.
• Rhythm and Time: Speech patterns, attitudes and speed of movement of speech.  This may be affected by geographic location from which a person comes.  This also includes time management such as arriving on time or being late for an appointment.
• Objectics: Personal hygiene and style of dress.

The need for helping children who do not learn the hidden curriculum of social and behavioral skills is not exclusive to general education.  It has been a source of concern, particularly for students with autism since it is a core difficulty for students identified with this condition.  Many students with high functioning autism and Asperger syndrome receive most of their instruction in mainstream classrooms due to their ability to make progress with the academic curriculum.  Children and youth with Asperger syndrome are often describes as “lacking an awareness of social protocol, lacking common sense, tending to misinterpret social cues and unspoken messages and being inclined to display a variety of socially unaccepted and nonreciprocal responses”. (Myles, 1998, pg. 4)  It is common for this social awkwardness to lead to the individual developing high levels of stress and becoming emotionally vulnerable.  They may find the world unpredictable and frightening and can develop behaviors that cause disruption to the educational environment. Show Me How You Feel
Most children learn to understand their own feelings and the feelings of others through incidental learning.  There are a large number of children who require instruction in these basic skills.  Nowicki, Duke and Marshall (1996) describe the children requiring such instruction as “children who don’t fit in”.  Understanding feelings is one component of the language of social success.  Instruction in feelings should include instruction in the reading of facial and body expressions, key components of nonverbal communication.  The rules for relationships are necessary to make the people around us comfortable and to help our students “fit in” to society.  

Show Me How You Feel is a simple process that uses the Mayer-Johnson Picture Communication Symbols to teach students the basics of communicating feelings.

The activities can be incorporated into other activities such as social skills groups, calendar time, circle time, etc.  The process involves using feelings icons and a chart.  The teacher asks children to choose a feeling icon to demonstrate how he/she is feeling then has them place it below their name or picture on a chart. The teacher talks about how many children have the same feeling or how some feel different than other children.  She may point out how facial expressions, body language, and tone of voice of the children matches the picture they have chosen.  The procedures are different for older students.

When a child is frustrated, upset or angry, this is an opportune time to talk about those feelings.  For children who may act aggressively towards others when feeling this way, this is a great time for the teacher to discuss the feeling and ways for peers to stay safe.  This is also a great time to talk about positive feelings and the way it effects behavior. 

The key to this activity is to teach children to identify their own feelings and to recognize the feelings of others.  These are two of the areas that children who have difficulty fitting in have the most trouble.  Once they have learned to identify their own feelings and the feelings of others, they can learn to identify the other aspects of nonverbal communication that revolves around the feelings of people.  This is really a very complex process.

Having children act out their feelings through role-playing or drawings may extend the activity.  Talk about the feelings of the characters in children’s literature and how the feelings effect behavior and relationships.  Teach children the cause and effect of feelings, behavior and relationships.  Teach children that it is okay to be upset, angry and mad but they need to control their actions.  Teach appropriate behavior options in response to feelings.  Teach communication!  The CAT-Kit

The Cognitive Affective Training Kit

A tool for teaching social skills, emotions, behavior, coping abilities, perspectives and communication skills.

Developed by Dr. Tony Attwood, Kirsten Callesen and Annette Moller Nielsen

This tool is ageless and can be used by parents, teachers, counselors, therapists and other professionals.  It is a hands-on adaptation of cognitive behavior strategies.  This tool is powerful for teaching feelings of self and others.  Students can learn to regulate their behavior and how their behavior impacts others.  This is a great tool to teach theory of mind skills. The Manual

An introduction to Cognitive Affective Training

Introduction to the elements of the kit for practical application The CAT-organizer

A visual tool that helps structure a meaningful conversation with a student about behavior Nine Basic Feelings

10 sub-categories of feelings under each basic feeling category.  Each feeling has a picture and word symbol.

• Joy
• Sorrow
• Fear
• Love
• Anger
• Pride
• Shame
• Surprise
• Safety

The Measure

Similar to a thermometer and divided into intervals from 0 to 10.  Circles of Velcro are affixed at each interval so the faces, feelings, words and other visual symbols can be applied. The Body

A simplified body figure used to facilitate conversation about the connections between thoughts/feelings and body/behavior.  The student can identify where certain emotions affect them physically. My Circles

A visual model to illustrate the student’s relationships, friendships and interests.

• Circle 1 – me
• Circle 2 – family
• Circle 3 – friends
• Circle 4 – professionals
• Circle 5 – strangers

Timetables

Use to show how feelings can change over time

Use to present schedules and plan events

• Day
• Week
• Year

Behavior Palettes

Charts that contain written descriptions of different behaviors with the thoughts and feelings behind behaviors.  Promotes understanding to help the student develop the ability to self-regulate.

• Red – aggressive
• Yellow – passive aggressive
• Grey – submissive
• Green – assertive

The Wheel

A visual personality organizer that promotes self-awareness.  Use words, symbols, drawings and colors to create a customized reflection of the student’s personality. CAT-Book Labels

Used to create workbooks for the student to create additional books for assignments as follow-up activities to the CAT-Kit activities.

• Feelings Book
• Diary
• Success Book
• Special Interests

Learning Objectives: