The Autism Society Event and Education Recordings Archive

The vast majority (90% or more) of students with disabilities think with a visual learning system, yet traditional schools present most information using auditory methods such as oral lectures, sound-based literacy methods, or behavioral rules presented with words out of context. This cultural mismatch of learning with a visual brain in an auditory culture particularly impacts individuals with autism or social communication disorders who find it challenging to acquire pro-social concepts.

The reality of these brain differences between thinking with a visual meta-cognition and trying to learn to fit in an auditory culture is challenging. On one hand, the established societal auditory norms, spoken with words, out of context, and mentally inferred can be found in abundance by individuals who are able to use an auditory meta-cognition. On the other hand, individuals with autism use a visual meta-cognition and therefore cannot use the auditory words to “see” what they look like in future actions nor how their actions affect those around them. As these students grow older they often socially isolate themselves and may develop mental health afflictions such as anxiety, depression, or conduct disorders. Poignantly, many of these same students express a strong life-long desire to feel included among peer groups, but cannot understand why they are marginalized or rejected for their anti-social behavior.

Neuroeducation or the triangulation of literature from neuroscience, cognitive psychology, and language help provide a better understanding of learning pro-social concepts.  For example, recent advances in neuroscience and cognitive psychology have begun to identify social language functions particularly challenging to individuals with autism such as reading facial cues, deciphering tone of voice, understanding others’ emotions, or reading the nuances of pro-social expectations. Based on this triangulated literature, participants will be provided with Neuro-Semantic Language Learning Theory (NLLT).

The NLLT provides evidence-based research to create a wide range of visual language strategies (viconic language methods) to allow individuals  to mentally depict the nuances of pro-social interactions that have traditionally been elusive. For example, being told to “sit still,” “don’t interrupt,” “be kind,” or “be polite” create no mental pictures without visual depiction to match these words. Differences between auditory and visual language will be clarified, and case studies will be shown to illustrate successful social integration and remediation of emotional disturbance among students with ASD. Learning will be defined through each of the neuroeducation lenses.

Participants will engage in language, evidence-based cognitive methods, to increase pro-social conceptual thinking. Numerous case examples and student work will be provided to showcase a variety of language strategies that improve pro-social and cognitive thinking. Participants will be able to connect a learner’s thinking to meta-cognition to language function and see how a person with a visual thinking system must be able “to see” how to fit into societal expectations.  Learning what others think about societal concepts and what their pictures look like empower individuals to begin to use their own visual thinking to create a lens that fits within the auditory expectations of societal norms.