Visual Supports for People with Autism: A Guide for Parents and Professionals »

Most of us use visual supports in our daily lives-for example, a shopping list, calendar, or a roadmap. Visual supports are particularly beneficial to people with autism because they help make abstract concepts concrete and capitalize on the user's inherent visual learning strengths.

Visual Supports for People with Autism shows parents and educators how incorporating these aids while teaching can improve academic performance, behavior, interaction with others, and self-help skills. In a friendly, conversational-style, the authors, both certified behavior analysts, describe the deficits typical of autism-language, memory, temporal sequential skills, attention, motivation, and social skills-and present strategies to use visual supports to address those issues at school and home. This guide presents an abundance of examples, illustrated by dozens of black & white and color photos, including:

activity schedules
calendars
charts
checklists
color coding
flip books
graphic organizers
mnemonics
nametags
photo boards
Power Cards
scripts
Social Stories
to-do lists
video modeling

Visual Supports also explains considerations such as portability, durability, preferences, age appropriateness, and effectiveness. While visual supports can enhance learning, they should, however, eventually be eliminated to avoid over-dependence on them. An entire chapter describes different ways to fade visual supports.

With this book, there's no limit to what can be taught, from fostering social interaction by using a graphic organizer of conversational talking points to learning to put away toys from video modeling. Most of the visual supportspresented in this book are low-tech and easy-to-use, making it simple for parents and professionals to create their own, suited to the needs of their students. Inspiring success stories will further motivate parents and professionals to get started.

ADVANCE for Speech-Language Pathologists & Audiologists

All of the visual supports noted in the book are low-tech and most can be made with materials found in the home or classroom. Clear, concise writing and abundant illustrations make this an ideal book for families, teachers, therapists, and anyone else working with people with autism or other developmental delays and those with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder.

Acknowledgments     vii
Foreword   Jan S. Handleman     ix
Introduction: Unlocking the Door: How Visual Supports Can Help     xi
The Features of a Good Visual Support     1
Some Commonly Used Visual Supports: A Primer     9
How Visual Supports Can Help with the Development of Language     23
Using Visual Supports to Increase Memory: The Who, What, Where, Why, and How     39
Temporal Sequential Skills     61
Using Visual Supports to Increase Attending     85
Using Visual Supports to Increase Motivation     99
Using Visual Supports to Increase Social Skills     115
Strategies for Fading Visual Supports     133
An Example of the Use of Visual Supports to Increase Opportunities     145
References     149
Resource Guide     157
Index     165