The Autism Society Event and Education Recordings Archive

Dr. Eric Courcheine is well known for his research on the impact of differences in the Cerebellum on the developing child's ability to regulate and shift attention. This core deficit area is inter-related with a range of developmental challenges experienced and presented by children with ASD including difficulties with transitions, difficulty shifting attention away from areas of interest to orient to social and language input and difficulty in attention regulation per se. Perseverative thinking can also be viewed as a related characteristic. This presentation will describe and demonstrate a variety of strategies for promoting an improved ability to regulate and shift attention, including:
For instance, one can interrupt perseverative language by "slowing down" the child's thinking to allow the adult to write, then introducing brief "commercials" to focus on alternative activities or ideas.  Another example would be practicing rapid attention shifting by introducing brief interruptions within preferred activities (e.g. computer programs, video games, movies) to complete varied associated tasks and/or respond to questions related to the activities.

How Does Your Engine Run or the Alert Program can give the child visual supports and activities to help them to learn to self regulate their emotions, energy and attention.  We will show visual examples of this system. Attention and focus can also be increased my introducing motivational systems that appeal to that child's interest.  These systems work best when there is a visual support.  Examples will be given.

There is a wealth of available information on the communication deficits in ASD. This presentation content is based on the perspective that a significant number of children with a ASD learn language using the part of their brain that we would use to acquire a second language. However, they do not have a primary language base and therefore, at least as young children, they are often unable to identify and express when they do not understand. It remains up to others (their caretakers and teachers) to identify their signals of confusion (e.g. loss of attention, self-directed behavior, attention or reaction seeking behaviors) and intervene to support comprehension and cooperation. This presentation shares a variety of practical strategies that the participants can use to differentiate issues of "compliance" from issues of "comprehension." In the classroom educators are often observed to "over talk" to their students, leading to non-compliant and aggressive behaviors. One of the important messages of this segment of the power point is the importance of "talking less" and "showing more." Because of their memory based learning style, this population of learners is vulnerable to memorizing and learning to recite a good deal of information that they do not know how to flexibly apply. This presentation also demonstrates a range of strategies for teaching meaning rather than rote skills.
Most of our students with ASD have difficulty with social cognition and perspective taking.  We will share some activities to promote better understanding of others thoughts and why and how that affects ourselves.

We have heard from some others that sensory methods are not an evidence based practice.  However, when we hear from adults with autism, they speak of how much of a problem sensory input and processing was and is for them.  We will quote from some of these individuals and give examples of strategies that have made a difference.

We will be unable to cover all the underlying features of autism in this short period, but we hope to give a clearer understanding of some characteristics and some strategies that can be helpful.

Learning Objectives: