Visual Strategies and Behavior in Autism Spectrum Disorders

 

Students with Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD) and related communication challenges experience significant difficulties in behavior and social skills.  The difficulties they have can often be related to communication in two ways.  First, these students cannot express themselves effectively.  Second, they don’t understand.  They don’t understand what they are supposed to do or not do.  They may be confused about what is happening or not happening. The list goes on.

 

The use of visual strategies can build a bridge toward effective communication. Visual strategies can provide the support necessary for students to develop appropriate skills for effective participation in life activities.

 

Most of these students with ASD and related communication challenges are visual learners!  This observation has tremendous implications. Capitalizing on their strengths, the use of visual strategies alters many social, communication, behavior and educational challenges.

 

While it is common for educational programming to focus on the development of communication skills for these students, that focus tends to be directed toward developing their expressive communication skills.  Comparatively little attention is directed toward increasing the student’s ability to understand the communication in his life.

 

For these individuals, their struggle with communication is far more complicated than just the development of verbal language. Understanding the communication of others, trying to figure out what is happening or not happening, handling changes and transitions, and interpreting cues and signals in the environment can all be areas of difficulty that result in frustration and behavior that is seen as disruptive.

 

At the same time, research demonstrates that most of these students display a relative strength in visual skills compared to their auditory abilities.  Visual strategies capitalize on that strength.  Using visual strategies to support communication helps students organize their lives, significantly reduces behavior problems and increases functional communication.  This is accomplished in part by developing a system of visual tools and aids to increase comprehension.  Schedules, aids to give directions, tools to give information, and visual supports to establish and communicate rules are some of the tools designed to increase the student’s understanding of what’s happening around him. 

 

Visual tools and supports are not magic. They won’t fix every problem that students have, but they will provide a valuable framework to support their lives. Implementing a system of visual tools and supports significantly reduces various behavior problems and increases effective communication interactions for most students.

 

The principle of visually supported communication is simple; the impact on the functioning of most students with these individuals, however, is profound.  While many people use a few visual tools in their homes and education environments, few use this medium of communication support nearly as much as would be beneficial for these students. 

 

The book Solving Behavior Problems in Autism provides an assessment tool that leads the reader to discover the causes of behavior problems and then to develop solutions to those problems.

 

What Are Visual Strategies

Who Can Benefit From Visual Strategies?

Why Do Visual Strategies Help?

What is the Research?