Class Presentations and positive behavioral support for children with autism

I enjoyed both class presentations today. The first presentation by Kaitlyn and Liz, on writing goals and objectives was very informative. A lot of the information they went over was information we should already know. However, the different parts of goals and the theory behind the rationale is beneficial and a good refresher from Methods of Therapy I. As most of my classmates are in second semester of clinic, we have experience writing goals and objectives and finding materials that could explain why we are working on specific goals for the clients. It seems that many of us in our rationale use frequency of occurrence and the years by which certain sounds or phonological processes are mastered. For this presentation, our group thought velar fronting would be a good phonological process to work on because this process disappears by age 3.
For the second presentation, I thought the knot game was fun. This was a good way to show interprofessional collaboration. It was also a good bonding activity. Unfortunately, our team was unable to break free at the end, but the reason behind this activity was clear. I also liked the topic of special education classroom vs. a normal or mainstream classroom. The topic brings up a lot of good points. What is best for the child? What do the parents prefer? What do the teachers suggest? Will pulling out create more hardships for the child? There are many questions surrounding this topic. Based on Ethan, I think keeping him in a mainstream classroom with an aid would be the best solution because he gets to stay with his friends, is not segregated from the general classroom, and this allows one on one time and help relating to his own personal needs.
The article I read this week was called “Understanding and Intervening with the Challenging Behavior of Young Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder.” This article was very interesting and informative. I could not stop highlighting information from the article as it seemed that most of the information was relevant and new to me. I thought the article was set up clearly, with the steps of PBS (positive behavior support) laid out nicely. I have never interacted with a child with autism. From what I have heard however, many children with autism have problem behaviors. I’ve also heard these children need strict routines to function socially and need routines for daily activities. From the article, it seems as though the positive behavior support is a great way to set up individualized strategies while reducing specific problem behaviors of the child. This program needs a lot of support from both educators and family. Family involvement seems to be crucial, as they have the knowledge of their child’s behaviors, and can provide insight into their consequences and strategies that they use at home. I also liked the addition of the case study for Benjamin. This example allowed me to go through each steps of this process. I also thought it was interesting that as children learn effective and conventional alternative forms of communication for getting what he or she wants, these challenging behaviors will decrease. Overall I thought this article was really interesting and provided me some insight into the nature and treatment of children with autism spectrum disorders.

Elianna and Writing Goals

After watching conversations in class with Elianna, it’s noticeable that Elianna’s speech needs remediation. From calculating mean length of utterance, her first conversation “Home,” had an MLU of 4.41, which was in comparison to a 4 year old. Elianna’s MLU for “School,” was 2.9, which was equivalent to a 3 year old. Lastly, for “Plant,” Elianna’s MLU was 7, which is equivalent to an individual older than 5. These results indicate that she is very inconsistent. Our results indicated that she does not use all of Brown’s morphemes. Children at her age should be using all of them. She was very repetitive. Elianna was good at contractible copulas, using plurals and nouns, and was talkative. Overall, Elianna needs help with intelligibility, using more vocabulary, and generalizing her verb usage. This activity was informative because it allowed students to revisit different assessments. Mean length of utterance, and assessments for pragmatics, semantic and syntax were popular. The goals for Elianna were easy to make because she had a lot of inconsistencies within the conversations. Our goals consisted of better eye contact, use of Brown’s morphemes, and correct responses to –wh questions regarding the purpose of the activity.
This activity tied in nicely with the presentation by Sam and Jackie. This activity allowed the class to develop appropriate goals for Ben. I liked the addition of materials to add to the goals. One aspect of the activity that Dr. Vogler-Elias brought up, were other considerations for answering questions when devising an activity. For answering questions, Ben answers questions correctly in a quiet environment. This is important to think about when devising a lesson plan and planning the activities. Because Ben prefers quiet environments, maybe the lesson can start in a quiet room with just him and the clinician. From there, the clinician can bring in another person, and keep doing this as he gets more comfortable. The clinician may need to give an explanation to Ben that there will be more than one person in a classroom, and that all of the children answer questions. This may decrease the fear or anxiety he may have if this is the cause for his short answers. Also, during the activity, I liked Emily’s idea for the white tabs as a way to gather data during the session. This seems like a good way to take data because it keeps the child from getting distracted and it’s easy and quick.

Principles of Intervention

While reading this article, there were many concepts and ideas that were familiar. In methods of therapy class last semester, we learned the pros and cons of different intervention approaches; child centered, hybrid, and clinician directed. In my opinion, choosing on an intervention approach depends on the client. With younger children, I think a natural environment is important, as this makes carryover easier. However, with clinician directed, the client may produce more target responses and the clinician may get more substantial data. During clinic, we tend to use a lot of drill and kill. This helps us obtain accurate data and shows progress from session to session. But how much do they carry these skills over into school and in the home? The child centered approach may be beneficial for children who perform better in their natural settings. However, in this approach there is no reinforcements which I feel are needed when working with clients. The hybrid approach may be beneficial because this approach focuses on a small set of specific goals and the clinician has some control over the session. Overall, choosing an approach depends on the client’s needs and the clinician’s preference for one over the other.
Before this class, I never heard of the developmental descriptive model of language disorders. However, we use this model with our own clients. We look at the syntactic, semantic, and phonological skills that are in the developmental sequence. We use this information frequently in our rationales for our goals and objectives. Specifically, we look at the sounds that our client’s need remediation on, and we work on earlier occurring sounds first. For example, my client needs remediation on /l/ and /r/, but I decided working on /r/ would not be beneficial because my client is only 5 years old, and /l/ occurs earlier in the developmental sequence. We frequently look at the order children develop skills, and how they acquire these skills.

Single-Subject Design Activity: Mandarin Chinese

My article was the effect of a tutoring package to teach pronunciation of Mandarin Chinese. The article was interesting because I learned some information about the Chinese language. I have heard  in the past that Chinese is one of the hardest languages to learn. I enjoyed this activity because I have not read many single subject design articles, and  I am not used to the language that appeared in the article. The question sheet helped make sense of the article, and it was a good way to learn what the questions meant and what I was trying to look for. For example, I was unsure of what the specific single subject design was. In this case, the single subject was a male American college student who was enrolled in a 1st year Chinese class who demonstrated mastery of writing Chinese. I also enjoyed sharing the stories to each other and putting the articles in our own words. This also helped make sense of the article, and allowed us to learn other single subject designs.