Tag Archives: Autism Awareness

Autism Awareness Month: Free Social Skills Fortune Teller Activity

Posted on by

IMG_0882-764x1024While these fortune tellers may not be able to tell your future, they are sure to help your children with autism develop their social skills!  This free printable, created by Joel Shaul from Autism Teaching Strategies, makes social learning fun by having students pair up and offer conversation starters using a Social Skills Fortune Teller.  All you have to do is print, cut, fold and play!

The activity comes with separate templates to make six different fortune tellers.  Each of the templates help students work on the following skills:

  • Asking questions
  • Giving compliments
  • Talking about emotions
  • As well as self-help strategies for teasing and bullying.

For further tips, instructions for use, and to download this free printable, click here and don’t forget to share all the other fun ways you and your students have fun developing social skills by leaving a comment below!

Autism Awareness Month: Free Crayon Number Sorting Activity

Posted on by

crayon 1Get creative with this free number sorting activity designed by Lavinia Pop from In My World! This crayon inspired printable includes five different representations of a single number.  These symbols include line segments, dots, words, finger counting, as well as numerals.

To create the crayon pouches, simply cut around the outer edges and fold along the dotted center line.  Then glue, tape or staple the remaining bottom and side edges.  Once complete, cut out all the crayons and mix to start sorting!crayon 2We recommend printing the activity on cardstock or laminating the crayons and pockets for longer use.

To download this free printable click here and for more math literacy activities and ideas, you can read the full post from In My World here!

Autism Awareness Month: Free Owl Opposites Flashcard Activity

Posted on by

Encourage your students’ cognitive, language and word recognition skills with this free Owl Opposites Flashcards Printable from 1+1+1=1!

owl 1The entire set features an adorable pair of owl friends who demonstrate the following sixteen different opposites:

  • Short/tall
  • Hot/cold
  • Slow/fast
  • White/blackowl 2
  • Big/small
  • Clean/dirty
  • More/less
  • Dry/wet
  • Same/different
  • Light/heavy
  • Low/high
  • Hard/soft
  • Short/long
  • Front/back
  • Empty/full
  • Weak/strong

Laminate or print on cardstock for longer use and attach on a metal ring to keep the cards all together.

To print out your free Owls Opposites Flashcards, click here. We hope you and your students have a hoot with this printable!

The Social Problem-Solving Model: Promoting Greater Social Independence – Part II

Posted on by

In continuing our exclusive social problem-solving series, Drs. Gordon and Selbst, developers of the new POWER-Solving® Curriculum, have addressed the importance of social information processing as a framework for understanding how children and adolescents get along with their peers and adults.

The Social Problem-Solving Model: Promoting Greater Independence – Part II
Steven B. Gordon, PhD, ABPP & Michael C. Selbst, PhD, BCBA-D

Social Information Processing (SIP) is a widely studied framework for understanding why some children and adolescents have difficulty getting along with their peers and adults.

A well-known SIP model developed by Crick and Dodge (1994) describes six stages of information processing that individuals cycle through when responding to a particular social situation:

  1. encoding (attending to and encoding the relevant cues);
  2. interpreting (making a judgment about what is going on);
  3. clarifying goals (deciding what their goal is in the particular situation);
  4. generating responses (identifying different behavioral strategies for attaining the decided upon goal);
  5. deciding on the response (evaluating the likelihood that each potential strategy will help reach their goal, and choosing which strategy to implement);
  6. and performing the response (doing the chosen response).

These steps operate in real time and frequently outside of conscious awareness. Many studies have demonstrated that children and adolescents have deficits at multiple stages of the SIP model which impact their development of appropriate peer interactions and the development of aggressive behaviors (Lansford, Malone, Dodge, Crozier, Pettit and Bates, 2006).

As a result, they have difficulty attending to and interpreting social cues, adopting pro-social goals and utilizing safe, effective and non-aggressive strategies to handle conflict situations. The development of strong social skills has been shown to contribute to the initiation and maintenance of positive relationships with others.

POWER-Solving BooksThe POWER-Solving® Curriculum (Selbst and Gordon, 2012) is heavily influenced by the components of the SIP model as seen in the five steps of POWER-Solving, easily learned in the acronym POWER:

  • Put the problem into words;
  • Observe your feelings;
  • Work out your goal;
  • Explore possible solutions;
  • Review your plan

The curriculum is comprised of several modules, each with their own materials for facilitators and students. While it is critical for the student to learn the POWER-Solving® Steps first (i.e., the “toolbox”), the facilitator can determine the sequence of the subsequent modules. For example, one may prefer to move to the Anger Management module after the introduction. Alternatively, one may decide to move to Social Conversation or Developing Friendships. The goal is for students to learn valuable POWER-Solving skills that they can apply to an infinite number of social situations throughout their lives.

REFERENCES

Crick, N.R., & Dodge, K.A. (1994). A review and reformulation of social information-processing mechanisms in children’s social adjustment. Psychological Bulletin, 115(1), 74–101. doi:10.1037/0033-2909.115.1.74.

Lansford, J.E., Malone, P.S., Dodge, K.A., Crozier, J.C., Pettit, G.S., & Bates, J.E. (2006). A 12-year prospective study of patterns of social information processing problems and externalizing behaviors. Journal of Abnormal Child Psychology, 34, 715-724.

Selbst, M.C. and Gordon, S.B. (2012). POWER-Solving: Stepping stones to solving life’s everyday social problems. Somerset, NJ: Behavior Therapy Associates.

ABOUT STEVEN B. GORDON, PHD, ABPP

Steven B. Gordon, PhD, ABPP is the Founder and Executive Director of Behavior Therapy Associates, P.A. He is a clinical psychologist and is licensed in New Jersey. Dr. Gordon is also Board Certified in Cognitive and Behavioral Psychology by the American Board of Professional Psychology and is a Diplomate in Behavior Therapy from the American Board of Behavioral Psychology. Dr. Gordon has co-authored three books, published numerous articles, presented papers at local and national conferences, and served on editorial boards of professional journals. Most recently, Dr. Gordon and Dr. Selbst have co-authored the new social-emotional skills program POWER-Solving: Stepping Stones to Solving Life’s Everyday Social Problems. Dr. Gordon’s professional interests range from providing assessment and treatment for individuals diagnosed with Autism Spectrum Disorders, AD/HD and other disruptive behavior disorders associated with childhood and adolescence. He has co-founded and is the Executive Director of HI-STEP® Summer Program, which is an intensive five-week day program for children to improve their social skills and problem solving ability. In addition, Dr. Gordon has had extensive experience providing clinical services not only for children diagnosed with phobias, stress, selective mutism, obsessive compulsive disorders and depression, but also with adults coping with anxiety,depression and relationship difficulties. Dr. Gordon is a member of the American Psychological Association, the Association for Behavioral and Cognitive Therapies, and the New Jersey Psychological Association.

ABOUT MICHAEL C. SELBST, PHD, BCBA-D

Michael C. Selbst, PhD, BCBA-D is Director of Behavior Therapy Associates, P.A. He is a Licensed Psychologist and a Certified School Psychologist in New Jersey and Pennsylvania. He is also a Board Certified Behavior Analyst at the Doctoral level. Dr. Selbst has co-founded and is the Executive Director of HI-STEP® Summer Program, which is an intensive five-week day program for children to improve their social skills and problem solving ability, and the Director of the Weekend to Improve Social Effectiveness (W.I.S.E.). He has extensive experience working with pre-school aged children through adults, including individuals who have social skills deficits, emotional and behavioral difficulties, learning disabilities, gifted, and children with developmental delays, including those with Autism and Asperger’s Syndrome. Dr. Selbst consults to numerous public and private schools, assisting parents, teachers, and mental health professionals, and presents workshops on all topics highlighted above, as well as Parenting Strategies, Depression, and Suicide Prevention. Dr. Selbst and Dr. Gordon have co-authored the new social-emotional skills program POWER-Solving: Stepping Stones to Solving Life’s Everyday Social Problems. Dr. Selbst is a member of the following professional organizations: American Psychological Association; National Association of School Psychologists; Association for Behavioral and Cognitive Therapies; Association for Behavior Analysis International; Association for Contextual Behavioral Science; New Jersey Psychological Association; and New Jersey Association of School Psychologists.

The Social Problem-Solving Model: Promoting Greater Social Independence – Part I

Posted on by

This week, in continuing the spirit of Autism Awareness, we’re excited to feature a two-part expert article on a social problem-solving intervention method by Steven Gordon, PhD, ABPP, and Michael Selbst, PhD, BCBA-D, who are the founder and directors of Behavior Therapy Associates, P.A.  Here in Part I, Drs. Gordon and Selbst have addressed the outcomes of different types of social skills training and what an effective social skills teaching program encompasses in order to promote independence in learners.

The Social Problem-Solving Model: Promoting Greater Independence – Part I
Steven B. Gordon, PhD, ABPP & Michael C. Selbst, PhD, BCBA-D

Students with social skills deficits often have difficulty in many of the following areas: sharing, handling frustration, controlling their temper, ending arguments, responding to bullying and teasing, making friends, and complying with requests.

These impairments require direct instruction to address the deficits. In addition, these impairments are exacerbated for those with a mental health diagnosis of Autism Spectrum Disorder, Attention Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder, Oppositional Defiant Disorder, and Nonverbal Learning Disorder.

A large body of research indicates that social skills training produces short and long term positive outcomes. The improvement in social skills has many benefits: an increase in students’ positive behavior, reduction in negative behavior, improvements in academic performance, more positive attitudes toward school, and increase preparation for success in adulthood.

 

Social skills learning programs have yielded significant benefits in many studies conducted to date. “The ultimate goal of a social skills program is to teach the interpersonal, problem-solving, and conflict resolution skills that students need relative to interpersonal, problem-solving, and conflict resolution interactions. In a generic sense, then, students with good social skills are unlikely to engage in inappropriate internalizing or externalizing behaviors” (Knoff, 2014). In one important meta-analysis by the Collaborative for Academic, Social and Emotional Learning (CASEL), it was concluded that social and emotional programs are effective in both school and after-school settings, for students with and without behavioral and emotional problems, for racially and ethnically diverse students from urban, rural, and suburban settings across the K-12 grade range.

Social and Emotional Learning (SEL) interventions improve students’ social-emotional skills, attitudes about self and others, connection to school, and increase positive social behavior while reducing conduct problems and emotional distress. CASEL’s review also indicates that school-based programs are most effectively conducted by school staff (e.g., teachers, student support staff) and suggest that they can be effectively incorporated into routine educational practice. In light of CASEL’s positive findings, it has recommend that federal, state, and local policies and practices encourage the broad implementation of well-designed, evidence-based social and emotional programs in schools. Continue reading →

Autism Awareness Month: DIY Spatial Awareness Button Buddy

Posted on by

sugar aunts 1Looking for a simple tool to help improve your student’s handwriting skills? Check out this super easy, DIY solution from Sugar Aunts called the Spatial Awareness Button Buddy!  This tool helps youngsters accurately space letters and words within a sentence using a small Popsicle stick and a button.

Simply glue a button to one end of a Popsicle stick and instruct the student to lay the Button Buddy on its side to indicate where they should place the next letter as shown in the photo below.

sugar aunts 2

 

Once the child has completed a word, ask them to lay the Button Buddy flat on their paper, with the button right next to their last letter.  Show them that the space between each word is as long as the width of a button and have them write their next word on the opposite side of their Button Buddy.

Continue on until your little writer has mastered their new spatial awareness skills and can write full sentences without their Button Buddy!

For more spatial awareness activities and ideas, read the full article from Sugar Aunts here.  Otherwise, let us know what other crafts and activities you have come up with to help your students improve their handwriting in the comments section!

Facilitating Social Groups for Students with Autism

Posted on by

In honor of Autism Awareness Month, we’re pleased to highlight an NYC-based agency called East Side Social this week! Alicia Allgood is a BCBA and co-founder of East Side Social. With her co-founder Kimia Tehrani, BCBA, they organize social groups and also provide a wealth of additional services for both parents and practitioners in the field of autism. Alicia was kind enough to provide some very comprehensive answers to our BCBA consultant Sam Blanco’s questions about facilitating social groups for learners with autism. You can learn more about East Side Social here.

Autism Awareness Highlights: Interview with Alicia Allgood, MSEd, BCBA
Co-founder of East Side Social, New York, NY

Facilitating Social Groups for Students with AutismSam: What prompted you to begin East Side Social?

Alicia: I co-facilitated social groups in San Diego in the early 2000’s with an amazing group, Comprehensive Autism Services and Education. They provided a number of other services, but the social group was the directing psychologists’ pet project, and you could really tell for the quality. It was wonderful to see these quirky, amazing kids that were struggling socially come into this group and make friends. They engaged with one another in significant ways that impacted their sense of well-being and confidence, all the while learning how to be more and more socially appropriate. I was inspired. When I met Kimia in New York, she and I found we worked very well together. I mentioned my interest in starting such a group in New York, and Kimia held me to it. We both saw a need for these services here, but there really wasn’t much being offered at the time, and that which was being offered didn’t have a behavior analytic approach. In our mind, this suggested they weren’t objectively verifying the effect of their programs, nor were they necessarily using evidence-based practiced to teach the skills these kids needed to learn. We saw a need, we were inspired, and so made the necessary movements to begin East Side Social.

Sam: What is the primary challenge to organizing social skills groups? How have you addressed it?

Alicia: We were both private practitioners prior to starting this social group. Starting a business is a whole other beast in its own right, and being a good technician doesn’t necessarily mean you’re prepared to grow that skill into an actual business. We were caught a bit by surprise by all that would be necessary on the back end. From marketing to balancing the budget and handling insurance billing, we were not prepared to take all of that on while maintaining our private clients and actually preparing for and leading the social group. Realizing our deficits along the way, we’ve hired consultants and people to support the back end, and that is what has really made this possible. We couldn’t do what we do without the support of a small group of really wonderful people. It’s also been extremely challenging to find a way to collect data on target behavior during our groups. We’re suddenly extremely sympathetic to classroom teachers who are asked to collect data on their students. We have tried data collection systems into our token economies. We’ve also used time sampling data, and once when feeling highly ambitious and having approval of all parents, we video-taped all groups and spent hours upon hours watching and re-watching these videos, tracking target group behavior and individual learner behavior. This is a continuous work in progress that we feel dedicated to on account of our commitment to ethical behavior analytic practice. It’s also a bit fun to solve this puzzle. Continue reading →

Autism Awareness Month: Free Gum Ball Alphabet Matching Activity

Posted on by

Gumball Activity 1Start Autism Awareness Month on a sweet note with this gum ball alphabet matching activity! This free, easy-prep printable from lifeovercs.com and 123 Homeschool 4 Me helps young learners build strong letter recognition skills by asking them to match lowercase letter gumballs with uppercase letter gumball machines. All you have to do is print, cut and play!

Once your student gains mastery and confidence in their letter matching skills, consider asking them to complete the following more advanced tasks:

  • Sort the letters alphabetically
  • Sort vowels from consonants
  • Flip all the cards over for an instant memory letter matching game!

Gumball Activity 2To make sure that your letters last, we recommend printing the activity on cardstock or laminating the letters for longer use.

You can download this free printable here, but don’t forget to let us know in what other ways you and your students utilized this alphabet activity in the comments section!

10 Things Autism Awareness SHOULD Be About

Posted on by

We’re so thrilled to be kicking off Autism Awareness Month with a special guest article from the Executive Director of the Association for Science in Autism Treatment (ASAT) David Celiberti, PhD, BCBA-D, who shares with us 10 things autism awareness should be about. David has also provided a wealth of information and resources for parents and professionals to utilize in finding the best treatments out there, seeking out reliable research and asking good questions, helping individuals with ASD find a place in the workforce, and much more. To learn more about ASAT, please visit their website at www.asatonline.org. You can also sign up for ASAT’s free newsletter, Science in Autism Treatment, and like them on Facebook!

10 Things Autism Awareness SHOULD Be About

10 Things Autism Awareness SHOULD Be About
by David Celiberti, PhD, BCBA-D

April is Autism Awareness Month. The blue puzzle pieces will appear on thousands of Facebook pages and billboards, and the media will give greater attention to, and information about autism. Further awareness is a wonderful thing, as detection and diagnosis are necessary first steps to accessing help in the form of treatment, information, and support. With well over 400 treatments from which to choose, parents of children with autism need guidance, tools, and accurate information to make the best possible choices for their children: choices that will undoubtedly have a profound impact on both their current quality of life and their children’s future.

Clearly, autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is no longer the rare diagnosis that it once was. With the incidence of one in 68 children, and one in 42 boys, our own families, neighbors, and co-workers are all touched by autism. In fact, the sheer numbers have heightened awareness of autism in and of themselves. This awareness is essential: it promotes early detection, and with early detection, we hope for a relatively clearer course toward effective treatment and better outcomes. Sadly, however, the early detection of autism alone does not always mean a seamless path to intervention. Furthermore, families whose children are diagnosed with autism are still not able to expeditiously access the most effective science-based treatments available. Instead, families often have to sort through over 400 pseudo-scientific treatments until they arrive at the most effective and research-proven intervention in addressing the complex disorder of autism. We must do better!

“Autism Awareness” should be about more than just detection and diagnosis. It has always been ASAT’s hope that the conversation around autism awareness would be broadened to focus upon the obstacles that separate individuals with autism from effective, science-based intervention and distract their families, caregivers, and teachers from accurate information about effective autism intervention. Below are 10 ideas about what Autism Awareness should be about, along with ways that the Association for Science in Autism Treatment (ASAT) can assist families and providers in navigating the complex maze of autism treatment options.

ASAT_Point1

Autism treatment is a multi-million dollar industry. For the majority of the 400+ available interventions, science is overlooked in favor of pseudoscience, and they are marketed with heart-wrenching testimonials, anecdotes and video montages, and often bolstered with poorly crafted and misleading surveys. Many boast inaccurate and even outrageous claims that are touted as evidence of effectiveness. Aggressive marketing of these so-called “therapies” and “cures” is absolutely overwhelming and it drowns out accurate information for parents who are desperate to help their children.

For most other medical conditions, a provider who disregards a proven intervention in favor of using a “fringe” treatment could be sued for malpractice! Such safeguards do not widely exist for autism treatment. We do no favors for children with autism, their families, and those charged with providing effective services when we not only ignore quackery, but allow it to proliferate by failing to counter baseless claims. Families deserve better. Individuals with autism deserve better. Visit our website to learn more about the scientific support behind various autism treatments, the relevance of peer-reviewed research, the pitfalls of testimonials, as well as many other articles related to becoming a more savvy consumer. Please also see our review of Sabrina Freeman’s book, A Complete Guide to Autism Treatments.

As adults, voters, consumers, providers, and parents, choice underlies all of our decisions. Decision-making power comes with tremendous responsibility. There is a myriad of stakeholders whose decisions have profound implications for children and adults with autism – not just parents, but siblings, teachers, treatment providers, administrators, program coordinators, and taxpayers.

  • Scientists need to take responsibility in making their findings about an intervention’s effectiveness clear, unambiguous, and unexaggerated. Efforts should be taken to promote replication.
  • Administrators and program leaders need to take responsibility in identifying internal and external training opportunities that further their staff’s competence with evidence-based practice. Additionally, they should make sure their staff receives the support needed to sustain these efforts and to continually engage in data-based decision making when both selecting and monitoring interventions. They must be savvy and selective in their selections of trainings for their staff and not fall prey to gimmicks, splashy sales pitches or fads.
  • Providers need to select procedures that are based on published research, adhere to their discipline’s ethical guidelines about evidence-based practices, and maintain a commitment to ensuring that parents have truly been given the opportunity to provide informed consent. For example, if there is no scientific evidence to support an intervention that one is using, then it is an ethical obligation of the professional to inform parents of this lack of evidence. Please see Principle #1 and #2 of the Ethical Code for Occupational Therapists, Section 2.04 of the Ethical Principles of Psychologists and Code of Conduct, and Section 2 of the Guidelines for Responsible Conduct for Behavior Analysts.
  • Parents must continue to exercise caution in sorting through autism treatment options to make the best possible choice for their children, particularly since many providers do not make the path to effective treatment clear and simple.

There are far too many individuals with autism who do not have access to effective treatment, are receiving ineffective treatment, or are subjected to treatments that are, in fact, dangerous. Every minute of ineffective intervention is one less minute spent accessing effective intervention. Every dollar spent on an intervention that does not work depletes resources available for interventions that do work. For questions to ask to make sure that the individual with autism in your life is receiving science-based treatment, please see our article on questions to ask marketers and read more about the following three phases of inquiry about particular interventions and their associated questions and considerations in The Road Less Traveled: Charting a Clear Course for Autism Treatment:

  • Phase I: Exploring the viability and appropriateness of a particular treatment approach.
  • Phase II: Assessing the appropriateness of an intervention under the supervision of a specific service provider for a specific individual with autism.
  • Phase III: Monitoring the implementation of the treatment and evaluating effectiveness.

ASAT_Point3

As we know, not all information on the Internet is reliable and accurate. You have probably heard the term, caveat emptor (“Let the buyer beware”). Consumers must also practice caveat lector (“Let the reader beware”).

Often Internet information is deemed equivalent in relevance, importance, and validity to research published in peer-reviewed scientific journals, but it is not. Testimonials and uncontrolled studies from so-called researchers can lead parents astray and be a tremendous source of distraction. Parents of newly-diagnosed children may be particularly vulnerable. Know the red flags to avoid and learn how to evaluate research by visiting our website. Our library of articles highlights scientific concepts and methods as they relate to potential autism interventions, with the goal of providing families, educators and clinicians with the information they need in order to be savvy consumers of marketed treatment products and therapies.

Continue reading →

Tip of the Week: How to Avoid Over-Pathologizing Behaviors in Kids with Autism

Posted on by

A diagnosis of autism can be very challenging for a child and for his or her family. But one of the most difficult aspects of autism is that it is not clear cut what behaviors are related to autism, and what behaviors are related to just being a kid. Every child tantrums sometimes. Every child talks back sometimes. Every child engages in dangerous behavior sometimes.

When I look back on my own childhood, I think of several behaviors I exhibited: in third grade I cut my own hair while my teacher’s back was turned, in fourth grade I got mad at my brother and threw an alarm clock at him, and in seventh grade I loved Agatha Christie books so much that I frequently refused to go outside and sat in my room reading by myself for hours on end. If I had autism, any one of these behaviors may have been pathologized instead of being considered as just a part of growing up.

So how do you parse through all the behaviors your learner is exhibiting and figure out which ones you should actually be worried about? Here are a few questions to ask yourself in determining behaviors to address:

  1. Is the behavior dangerous?
  2. How often and for how long does your learner engage in the behavior?
  3. How different is this behavior from the learner’s same-age peers? For example, does your three year old cry for a couple minutes when told that she can’t have her favorite toy, or does she cry for two hours and refuse to engage with any other toys for the rest of the day?
  4. How is this behavior interfering with the learner’s ability to learn?
  5. How is this behavior interfering with the learner’s ability to engage with peers and family members?
  6. Is the behavior related to a skill? For example, pacing the room and flapping your arms is typically not related to a skill, but building Lego models can be related to a skill. If it is related to a skill, think about ways to provide opportunities for expanding that skill.

The answers to these questions should be able to inform the decisions that you make in intervening with behaviors. And we should remember that above all else, kids with autism are still just kids.

WRITTEN BY SAM BLANCO, MSED, BCBA

Sam is an ABA provider for students ages 3-12 in NYC. Working in education for ten years with students with Autism Spectrum Disorders and other developmental delays, Sam has developed strategies for achieving a multitude of academic, behavior, and social goals. Sam is currently pursuing her PhD in Applied Behavior Analysis at Endicott College.