The Autism Society Event and Education Recordings Archive

Cognitive/Language Strategies for Supporting Emotional Regulation

Learning Objectives: 1) Define emotional regulation and discuss importance in the classroom, 2) Discuss three guidelines for supporting regulation in the classroom, and 3) Describe several practical cognitive/language strategies for supporting regulation in the classroom.

Emotional regulation is a core process underlying attention and social engagement and is essential for optimal social-emotional and communication development (Prizant & Meyer,1993). As professionals working with preschoolers with ASD in an integrated preschool classroom, our primary responsibility is to support our students so that they can stay emotionally regulated and, therefore, available for learning, communicating, and participating. We have found that the time and attention we devote to determining which strategies will help our students stay emotionally regulated, pays dividends in the subsequent learning that takes place. This presentation will focus on discussing our three basic guidelines for working with children on the autism spectrum, describing the specific cognitive/language strategies that we use, and providing video examples our team using these strategies in the classroom.

Basic Guidelines

• Provide ample processing time

o Students with ASD typically need more processing time than typically developing children. Lack of processing time can quickly result in dysregulation. Wait and give the child the chance to do the thinking for himself (Rydell, 2012).

•  Keep language simple and/or stop talking!

o It is important to keep language simple to help the child with ASD process what has been said, especially in the classroom setting. It is also important to remember to stop talking altogether at times, especially if the child has begun to become dysregulated.

•  Use visuals

o Students with autism rely more heavily than others on visualization to support comprehension (Kana, Keller, Cherkassky, Minshew & Just, 2006). Make sure the visuals you are using are at the appropriate level of iconicity (e.g. objects, photos, icons) for that student.

Cognitive/Language Strategies

Many of these strategies help our students with prediction, an area of particular difficulty for students with ASD (Sinha, Kjelgaard, Gandhi, Tsourides, Cardinaux, Pantazis, Diamond & Held, 2014). Others help by making expectations clear, distracting the student from his own agenda, and/or empowering the student by building in choice.

• First, Then

o State the non-preferred task first, then the preferred task

• Give a Choice

o Give a choice that fits within the task that the child needs to complete

• I start, you finish

o Adult starts the task, child completes. Especially helpful with students who have trouble with initiation.

Show how many/how long

 o Help the child see how long he needs to stay with a task

Prepare for transitions

Visual schedules

○ Promotes independence, helps child organize himself and know what to expect

Incentive charts

○ Used judiciously and only with students who have the appropriate level of symbolic ability as well as the self-regulatory ability to delay gratification (Prizant & Laurent, 2014).