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Tero Toivanen

Autism Therapies and Outcomes -- Outcomes and Autism - 0 views

  • The view of the behavior analyst should be that the subject is always right. If the child isn't learning, you need to know why. It's not that the child is defective, it's that the approach isn't working. The therapist needs to ask, "what do I need to do to teach this child?" ...Being autistic shouldn't stop children from learning. It has nothing to do with their ability to learn. They just don't learn typically. That's the problem we have. You can't use "autism" as way to explain behaviors: it is the behaviors. Why do the behaviors occur? We don't always know. But that doesn't mean we can't teach children with autism language and social interaction. They don't need us to have fun -- they can create their own reinforcers. The therapist has to find a reinforcer that's better than what the child can do on his own. That "better thing" should always have a social component.
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    It's important to remember that, when it comes to therapy for children with autism, failure to progress is never the fault of the child. If you hear from a therapist that your child doesn't progress because of his behaviors, attention span, intelligence level, or stubbornness, it's time to question the therapist's technique.
Tero Toivanen

Eide Neurolearning Blog: Different MRI Findings in Autism - Autism not a Single Entity - 0 views

  • Studies such as this point out the problems of using only behavioral criteria to make the diagnosis of autism. In this study, a multidisciplinary team consisting for child psychiatrists, child psychologists, and speech therapists were used to make the diagnosis. With no hubris intended, we think a neurologist should be included on every autism team. Understanding the specific neurological challenges a child faces can help much more than a more one-size-fits-all approach to intervention.
  • When we have assessed children with an autism or possible autism diagnosis, we have seen the same very wide clinical variation in terms of neurological exam - you would not treat a child with visual processing disorders with purely behavioral modification, nor a child with auditory and language processing problems with facial recognition training.
  • Historically, autism was first recognized as an entity by a psychiatrist, but as it becomes even more clear that the behavioral label subsumes many different neurological conditions, it's time for business-as-usual to come to an end.
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    Studies such as this point out the problems of using only behavioral criteria to make the diagnosis of autism.
Tero Toivanen

A Controversial Autism Therapy Unravels a Family - TIME Healthland - 0 views

  • "With a facilitator guiding her arm, the child who had never been taught to read was suddenly writing poetry and English essays, taking history exams and doing algebra. The middle-schooler who couldn't put on her coat without help was typing about her plans to become a college professor,"
  • But the technique, in which the aide's hand is supposedly guided by the child to type what she wants to say, has been proved ineffective. It has been shown to rely on the aide's projections rather than to reflect the child's thoughts. Although some autistic children can learn to communicate genuinely via a keyboard with only initial guidance, facilitated communication, in which an aide always does the typing has repeatedly failed to demonstrate that the words are written or thought by the child. For example, when the facilitator is not allowed to hear the questions being asked of the child, the resulting answers are wrong or nonsensical.
  • When the Wendrow's daughter's aide typed allegations of sexual abuse against the girl's father and brother — and claimed that the child's mother had been ignoring her complaints — a prosecution of the family was set into motion that became nearly unstoppable. The aide refused to believe she was not typing her own ideas, even though the child was clearly not capable of the complex language being attributed to her. Once prosecutors and the aide became convinced of the truth of the allegations, even overwhelming evidence of their falsehood was ignored.
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    Facilitated Communication (FC) is dangerous!
Tero Toivanen

Research Unearths New Treatments for Autism - 2 views

  • The Utah researchers found that children receiving a combination of the two treatments (Lovaas-type training at school and TEACCH methods at home) showed three to four times greater progress on all outcome tests than did children who received only the school-based treatment. That study was reported in the Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders (Vol. 28, No. 1, p. 2532).
  • Researchers in Washington, D.C., are comparing a discrete trial training approach with a "developmental, individual-difference, relationship based" (DIR) approach, says child psychiatrist Stanley Greenspan, MD, professor of psychiatry at George Washington University Medical School.
  • Psychologist Robert Koegel, PhD, at the University of California, Santa Barbara, and his colleagues are attempting to tailor a standard treatment to the specific needs of an autistic child and family. The standard treatment is called pivotal response training
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  • An initial retrospective study is comparing two groups of 20 children initially diagnosed with autism who were functioning well after two or more years of treatment, either with a discrete trial training approach or the DIR approach. The study aims to determine if treatment differences lead to subtle differences in outcome, for example, in terms of flexibility, emotional range, creativity and richness of the child's inner life. Investigators are planning to follow this research with a prospective, randomized, more rigorous study of the two approaches.
  • "In our previous studies we found out that it looks like you can't just deliver a standard treatment to autistic kids, that there's so much variability among the children that what works for one child doesn't work for another child," he says. "Our hypothesis is that...unless you individualize treatment, you're not going to get the best effect."
  • Researchers at the University of Maryland are testing an intervention to trigger children's "social engagement system," which includes behaviors such as listening, looking, facial expressions and vocalizations that support social interaction, says psychologist Stephen Porges, PhD. The treatment is designed to improve autistic children's ability to interact with others, thereby making them more receptive to traditional therapies.
  • The intervention is based on the theory that tensing the middle ear muscles enables people to pick out the human voice from lower frequency sounds in the environment, Porges says. Treatment involves exercising middle ear muscles by playing music that has been altered to include only frequencies associated with the human voice, which improves one's ability to listen to human voices. This, in turn, stimulates the entire social engagement system, Porges says. About 80 percent of 50 children with autism or other behavioral problems receiving this treatment via five 45-minute sessions in a double blind, randomized controlled study showed marked improvements in listening, language and other communication skills.
  • In a report last year in the Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders (Vol. 28, No. 1, p. 15-23) evaluating an intensive home-based discrete trial training intervention, Stephen Sheinkopf, PhD, of the University of Miami and Bryna Siegel, PhD, of the University of California, San Francisco, noted that children receiving an average of only 21 hours per week of treatment showed gains in IQ comparable to those achieved by children receiving 32 hours per week. The intensity question remains an issue of importance for the autism community. "If we need 40 hours a week, fine," says psychologist Geraldine Dawson, PhD, of the University of Washington. "But if you only need 25, you have to realize that 40 hours is a tremendous burden not only financially, but on families and on the child."
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    Several treatments, and combinations of treatments, are under intense study.
Graeme Wadlow

Interventions to Improve Communication in Autism - 0 views

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    Interventions to Improve Communication in Autism Child and Adolescent Psychiatric Clinics of North America Volume 17, Issue 4, October 2008, Pages 835-856 Treating Autism Spectrum Disorders Rhea Paul PhD, Yale Child Study Center
Tero Toivanen

Interview with Robert Koegel | Pivotal Response Treatments for Autism Author on ABC's S... - 1 views

  • The NLP became synonymous with motivation and motivation is pivotal in teaching children with autism to respond to multiple questions.
  • Children often hate having to perform drill practices involved with other autism treatments, they feel like they are being forced to do something they don't enjoy and they react to this by causing a scene to get out of treatment.
  • Why would you say PRT is more effective than other therapies
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  • First and foremost, children think of it as fun and learn skills by doing what they enjoy.
  • PRT is effective in all of the child’s environments and versatile enough to use at home, in clinical settings, in an inclusive classroom, and in the community, and parents can easily start folding PRT strategies into the child's established routine right away.
  • How does PRT decrease stress for parents?
  • 1988 was the first time the word pivotal was used to describe this method. It was referred to previously as the NLP. It is considered a behavior intervention with similarities to the Lovaas method/ABA. 
  • What exactly are "pivotal responses?"
  • "areas that are central to wide areas of functioning such that improvements occur across a large number of behaviors." 
    • Tero Toivanen
       
      Pivotal responses määrittely!!!
  • Once they understand the connection between using their own words and getting something they want, they will start to use words spontaneously to communicate their needs. Mastering this one pivotal behavior, motivating the child to understand the connection between their own efforts to communicate with the outcomes of their efforts, will have an enormous ripple effect on other skills.
    • Tero Toivanen
       
      In practice.
  • It works because there is a motivator that makes the child want to work to accomplish the task at hand, the reward for accomplishing the task has a direct connection to it.
  • PRT was named by the National Research Council of the National Academy of Sciences in 2001 as one of the top 10 state-of-the-art treatments for autism in the United States.
  • A child who is highly motivated to communicate and is having fun doing it will learn much more rapidly than a child who is not motivated and not enjoying what they are learning.
Tero Toivanen

New study confirms link between advanced maternal age and autism - 4 views

  • Advanced maternal age is linked to a significantly elevated risk of having a child with autism, regardless of the father's age, according to an exhaustive study of all births in California during the 1990s by UC Davis Health System researchers.
  • The researchers note that understanding the relationship between increased parental age and autism risk is critical to understanding its biological causes. Earlier studies have observed that advanced maternal age is a risk factor for a variety of other birth-related conditions, including infertility, early fetal loss, low birth-weight, chromosomal aberrations and congenital anomalies.
  • One possible clue comes from a 2008 UC Davis study that found some mothers of children with autism had antibodies to fetal brain protein, while none of the mothers of typical children did. Advancing age has been associated with an increase in autoantibody production.
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  • They added that some persistent environmental chemicals accumulate in the body and also may have a role to play in autism, possibly contributing to the apparent effect of parental age.
  • The study also suggests that epigenetic changes over time "may enable an older parent to transfer a multitude of molecular functional alterations to a child ... thus epigenetics may be involved in the risks contributed by advancing parental age as a result of changes induced by stresses from environmental chemicals, co-morbidity or assistive reproductive therapy."
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    Advanced maternal age is linked to a significantly elevated risk of having a child with autism, regardless of the father's age, according to an exhaustive study of all births in California during the 1990s by UC Davis Health System researchers.
Tero Toivanen

Toilet Train - How to Toilet Train a Child with Autism - 0 views

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    Toilet Train Your Child with Autism
Tero Toivanen

Adults with Autism - Finding the Right Home for Your Adult Child with Autism - 0 views

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    Finding the Right Home for Your Adult Child with Autism
Tero Toivanen

Childhood Disintegrative Disorder, Autism/PDD: Yale Child Study Center - 0 views

  • Childhood Disintegrative Disorder This rather rare condition was described many years before autism (Heller, 1908) but has only recently been 'officially' recognized.
  • The condition develops in children who have previously seemed perfectly normal. Typically language, interest in the social environment, and often toileting and self-care abilities are lost, and there may be a general loss of interest in the environment. The child usually comes to look very 'autistic', i.e., the clinical presentation (but not the history) is then typical of a child with autism.
  • A special educator in Vienna, Theodore Heller, proposed the term dementia infantilis to account for the condition.
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  • in most cases after even very extensive testing no specific medical cause for the condition is found. As with autism, children who suffer from this condition are at increased risk for seizures.
  • evidence suggest that it arises as a result of some form of central nervous system pathology.
  • Childhood disintegrative disorder is perhaps 10 times less common than more strictly defined autism
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    Childhood Disintegrative Disorder This rather rare condition was described many years before autism (Heller, 1908) but has only recently been 'officially' recognized.
Tero Toivanen

Top Autism Facts - Top Autism Facts - 2 views

  • 1. Autism Is a 'Spectrum' Disorder
  • it is possible to be bright, verbal, and autistic as well as mentally retarded, non-verbal and autistic.
  • 2. Asperger Syndrome is a High Functioning Form of Autism
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  • The only significant difference between AS and High Functioning Autism is that people with AS usually develop speech right on time while people with autism usually have speech delays.
  • 3. People With Autism Are Different from One Another
  • 4. There Are Dozens of Treatments for Autism - But No 'Cure'
  • 5. There Are Many Theories on the Cause of Autism, But No Consensus
  • 6. People Don't Grow Out of Autism
  • 7. Families Coping with Autism Need Help and Support
  • 8. There's No 'Best School' for a Child with Autism
  • Even in an ideal world, "including" a child with autism in a typical class may not be the best choice. Decisions about autistic education are generally made by a team made up of parents, teachers, administrators and therapists who know the child well.
  • 9. There Are Many Unfounded Myths About Autism
  • Since every person with autism is different, however, such "always" and "never" statements simply don't hold water.
  • 10. Autistic People Have Many Strengths and Abilities
  • They are also ideal candidates for many types of careers.
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    This brief, pithy article provides the bare bones basics for a quick read - along with links to more in-depth information for those who want to know.
Tero Toivanen

Autism Therapy: pivotal response training | Healing Thresholds - 0 views

  • Future research may allow therapists to know in advance which type of applied behavior analysis (ABA therapy) is most likely to work for any given child with autism.
  • This study of six children was designed to see if it is possible to predict which type of ABA therapy will work for which child with autism.
  • The authors were able to predict which children would respond to pivotal response training, but not which ones would respond to discrete trial training. The authors note that all children were first exposed to pivotal response training and then to discrete trial training and this may have influenced the results. Children who liked toys were more likely to respond to pivotal response training than children who did not like toys.
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  • This study looked at whether or not a type of applied behavior analysis (pivotal response training) could be used to teach play skills to children with autism.
  • . Both children in the study improved their social skills during recess time.
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    Type of training in which certain behaviors are assumed to be crucial for other behaviors. These pivotal behaviors are then targeted so that the behaviors that depend upon them can change as well.
Tero Toivanen

For a Child with Autism, How Much Help Is Too Much Help? - 3 views

  • I've noticed that when you offer a person constant help and support, even when he doesn't need it, he will stand back and let you do all the work.  It's just human nature: why work hard when someone else will do it for you?
  • Over the years, I've noticed that teachers and parents get into the habit of accomodating and stepping in for their children with autism.
  • I'm working hard to overcome my tendency to help too much, expect too little, and accept less than my son's best.
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    How to teach students to be independent?
Tero Toivanen

Autism Information - Autism Information You Need To Know - 1 views

  • There are plenty of myths about autism spectrum disorders out there.
  • But even those of use who are well-grounded in autism basics may be surprised by some of these facts, which are emerging from recent research.
  • We do know what causes autism -- but only in about 20% of cases.
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  • Quite a few children who are diagnosed with autism at a very young age are no longer diagnosable with autism by the time they’re school-aged.
  • Whatever the reasons, many children who are diagnosed with autism as toddlers will not be diagnosable by the time they're in fifth grade.
  • Early intervention (diagnosis and treatment prior to age three) is very helpful indeed, but there is no “window of opportunity” that slams shut at a certain age. Thus, even children who are diagnosed later or receive less early intervention may do quite well in the long run.
  • Early intervention does, however, provide a now-or-never opportunity to allow non-verbal children to develop some kind of useful tool for communication (picture cards, signs, or even spelling boards).
  • There is no official “cure” for autism. In fact, researchers like Dr. Susan Levy at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia argue that even when a young child is no longer diagnosable on the autism spectrum, he is probably still autistic.
  • Late talking is not an indication of a poor prognosis.
  • Children with autism may or may not be visual thinkers. Thus, school programs designed with visual thinking in mind may or may not be appropriate for any individual child with autism.
  • After many years of research, we still don’t know which treatments are most effective for which children -- or whether one treatment is more effective than another. Behavioral interventions are the best-researched treatments for autism, but even top scientists acknowledge that developmental interventions may or may not be equally useful for any given child. Meanwhile, only two drugs -- Risperdal and Abilify -- have been approved for use with children on the autism spectrum, and neither addresses “core” issues of autism (social/communication deficits).
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    Important facts and information about autism.
Child Therapy

Developing Self Confidence In Children - 1 views

My husband and I were really worried with the indifference that our second child has been showing. We noticed that she did not like to mingle with other kids in the class. Her teacher even told us ...

started by Child Therapy on 29 Nov 12 no follow-up yet
Graeme Wadlow

Shared heritability of attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder and autism spe... - 0 views

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    SpringerLink - European Child & Adolescent Psychiatry, Volume 19, Number 3
Graeme Wadlow

Eye-witness memory and suggestibility in children with Asperger syndrome. - 0 views

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    Eamon McCrory. 2007; Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry - Wiley InterScience
Child Therapy

Child Therapy Works - 2 views

I have the chance of asking professional help for my kid who has been depressed for the past few weeks. We did not know what the reason was and so we asked help from NLP4Kids a reputed therapy orga...

Therapy for children

started by Child Therapy on 23 Feb 12 no follow-up yet
J B

Tips for Setting up a Classroom for a Child with Autism - 3 views

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    Thanks for sharing, Jeremy!
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