The Autism Society Event and Education Recordings Archive

This presentation will teach individuals how to use declarative language statements paired with extended processing time as a means of facilitating participation in life activities. Further, splitting roles within patterned activities will be taught. Both techniques will foster’s the individual’s ability to establish competence in life, a strong internal motivator. This presentation focuses on teaching participants how to use declarative language statements as a means of supporting individual with Autism to assume responsibility for participation in life.  Participants will learn how to formulate declarative language that states the current environmental conditions, paired with extended processing times.  Through videos, participants will see that this input offers the individual with Autism an opportunity to think and an opportunity to participate in life without being told what to do. When an individual with Autism participates on his/her own accord, without overt direction, the sense of competence emerges and serves as it’s own motivator for further involvement.  Through participation, the individual with Autism begins to recognize his value as a member of the family/ community.  In addition, the declarative language input serves as a basis for modeling and thereby promoting conversational skills as declarative statements offer creative language about on going, immediate content.  Through the declarative language input, the individual with Autism can learn about the perspective of the adult, another area of need.  The participants of this session will learn how to grade the formation of the declarative language input across both language level and cognitive ability of the individual as the use of declarative language input is necessary for both individuals strongly challenged by Autism and those who are less challenged and have higher level language skills. In addition to the development of skills surrounding declarative language use, participants will learn how to create patterned activities for activities of daily living.  The use of patterned activities serves to divide the task into two parts, one for the individual with Autism and one for the adult.  For example, the role of loading a dishwasher could be divided into: one person gives the dish and the other person places it.  The role of cleaning a counter could be divided into: one person sprays the counter and the other wipes it.  With success, the roles can be switched. As these roles are an interaction, small variations are systematically introduced within the task across variables such as distance, types of materials, location of the task, the other participant, noise in the background, small problems to solve, etc.  It is through adjustments to these small changes that the individual with Autism learns to accept the challenge of change with competence as opposed to fear. In addition, the individual with Autism learns that tasks are not fixed routines.  Through these changes,  thinking skills are promoted involving: divergent thinking, problem solving, dynamic analysis, causal factors, predictions of outcomes, etc.  When the individual with Autism has mastered both roles, the task could be done with a peer or sibling and then the task could be done by the individual on his own while introducing other content for patterned activities.  The pairing of declarative language and patterned activities when facilitating participation of activities of daily living facilitates the assumption of responsibility by the child, allowing the adult to stop serving the child as the child can now better participate in life!