Summary: Examining Best Practice For Students With Autism

Running head: EXAMINING BEST PRACTICE FOR STUDENTS WITH AUTISM 1

EXAMINING BEST PRACTICE FOR STUDENTS WITH AUTISM

EXAMINING BEST PRACTICE FOR STUDENTS WITH AUTISM 2
Examining Best Practice for Students with Autism
There is little argument that early diagnosis and treatment are essential in addressing needs that impede communication and learning skills in children with autism spectrum disorders (ASD). Research has shown that intervention can teach individuals how to more effectively deal with, or work with, the difficulties associated with ASD as supported in research studies by the National Research Council in 2001 as reported by Ingersoll (2010).
DTT has always been the primary teaching tool in ABA but some of the other ABA adaptations are Applied Verbal Behavior (VB), Competent Learner Model (CBM) and Antecedent Behavior Consequence (ABC) and all are aspects of ABA (Weiss, 2008). Incidental teaching focuses on the student initiating the interaction by having the environment set up to elicit interest in the student. The student starts the interaction by making a request or focusing on a particular item or area and then the teacher prompts for continued interaction and responses. Incidental training involves dividing a classroom into zones for each activity. This limits distractions and can enable the trainer to work with a small group; however, ABA primarily trains one individual at a time. Some aspects of ABA training have changed to use errorless learning procedures. In errorless learning, the trainer makes a request during trial training and if the request is not followed through by the learner, the trainer will assist the learner in completing the task so there are no failed tasks. With increased focus on generalization, there has been a change towards having more incidental trainings and a shortening of
Using this approach correctly means you have to be flexible in your teaching and training to get the most out of your instruction for the learner to be successful. To obtain greater generalization and maintenance of skills, teaching is occurring during the normal routine to create a more comfortable setting and to relate skills more directly to the child. Adaptive tools are becoming more available and can promote greater independence for the individual. The inability to effectively communicate and interact with others is such a debilitating part of the disorder of ASD that every attempt to promote growth and improve communication and social skills should be encouraged. Implementing an approach that focuses on general social interactions and strives to provide understanding to an individual so that he can begin to make sense of their environment can be very effective. For the reasons documented in this paper, and due to the enigmatic nature of Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD), research suggests that Mesibov”s (1984) model, “The treatment and education of autistic and related communication handicapped children” (TEACCH) has more effective outcomes for students with diagnoses in the ASD spectrum than the Applied Behavioral Analysis (ABA) model because the ABA model focuses on task specific trials, the use of TEACCH focuses more on generalized teaching strategies, and TEACCH places emphasis on individuals learning how to communicate more effectively with others and