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The pictogram room is a set of educational video games for children and adults with autistic spectrum disorder (ASD). Aspects like music and structured learning have been taken into account in the game designs, because many studies have indicated that such aspects improve the learning results among people with ASD. To define the educational goals o...
Accessible summary
Children with autism spectrum disorders (aged 7–18 years) were interviewed about their experience of living at home and in short term care.
Parents and caregivers were also interviewed and, when the child had little or no speech, he or she was observed in both settings.
Pictures and schedules were used to prompt the children but...
Medicine exists in social and cultural contexts and diagnosis has wide implications. Autism was introduced as a medical category in 1943 by Kanner and for four decades the main thrust of scientific research around diagnosis was to establish the distinctness of this category, developing internally consistent criteria for diagnosis and differentiatin...
Background: Difficulties in personal and fictional narratives are an important aspect of autism spectrum disorders, yet there is little evidence of the precise nature of the problems with narrative in autism. In particular, it is not clear whether difficulties stem from not understanding the emotional or mental state content, in developing story sc...
Difficulties in understanding symbolism have been documented as characteristic of autistic spectrum disorders (ASDs). In general, virtual reality (VR) environments offer a set of potential advantages for educational intervention in ASD. In particular, VR offers the advantage, for teaching pretend play and for understanding imagination, of it being...
Rita Jordan, Professor in Autism Studies at the School of Education, University of Birmingham, gave last year's Gulliford Lecture at the University of Birmingham on 4 October 2007. This article is based upon that lecture. In it, Professor Jordan discusses the role of education in the lives of people with autistic spectrum disorders. She traces the...
Introduction Schacter (2003) has given an accessible account of practical memory characteristics in the general population, through an analysis of memory problems – characterized as the seven ‘sins’ of memory. Memory in autistic spectrum disorders (ASDs) is nontypical; nevertheless, Schacter's analysis provides a useful framework for examining that...
How social workers perceive autistic spectrum disorders (ASD) will inevitably impact upon how they assess the needs of children with ASD and their families, and upon the types of service or interventions they seek to provide to meet those needs. However, little is known of social workers’ understanding of the condition. Using a research instrument...
Rita Jordan, Lecturer in Autism at the University of Birmingham, and Stuart Powell, Reader in Educational Psychology at the University of Hertfordshire, consider the implications of the move towards a skills-based model in teacher education. They take as their focus pupils with autism and offer an alternative perspective on the nature of teacher ed...
The authors discuss the need for diagnosis and the place for intuition in the education of pupils with autism. They are in the Educational Research into Autism Group, School of Humanities and Education, University of Hertfordshire.
Children with autism may be found in a variety of educational settings. All teachers need to consider the very special needs of this group of children and how they may be met within the constraints of the National Curriculum. Rita Jordan and Stuart Powell, School of Humanities and Education, Hatfield Polytechnic, Hertfordshire, look at some of thos...
Short break services in a UK county were studied using a postal survey of 256 families with a child with an autistic spectrum disorder (ASD). Results confirmed high degrees of stress and low levels of informal support for all families, but no significant difference in the informal support available to non-users as compared to users of short break s...
Virtual Reality (VR) has been claimed to provide a particularly facilitatory environment for people with Autistic Spectrum Disorders (ASD) in that it offers structure, opportunities for repetition, affective engagement and, control of the learning environment. Virtual reality shares the advantages of computer-based learning, and has the additional...
The analysis of agency, a very close concept to presence, is of great help for acquiring insights into how the sense of presence is acquired in the developing child and also about the experience of presence itself. Empirical evidence coming from Cognitive Developmental Research together with the positive outcome of people with autism (who are not g...
There is a need to understand the difficulties faced by those with autistic spectrum disorders (ASD) in educational settings if one is to manage and help them manage their learning. This paper explores some of the most pertinent problems that arise. It analyses perceptual, social, conceptual, emotional and memorizing barriers to learning and shows...
This paper describes a set of services and software created so that what is called ‘ambient intelligence’ would compensate
for the ‘intellectual difficulties’ that people from this collective have. Existing concepts and standards of ambient intelligence
are strongly reinforced through the use of the exact current user’s position as a key factor to...
The article considers the nature of the presumed social play deficit in autistic spectrum disorders (ASDs). The nature of play and its typical development is outlined and discussed in relation to play development in ASDs. It is suggested that social play is a confluence of two strands of development that are affected in autism: social and emotional...
Research on memory processing suggests that memory for events that an individual experiences should be superior to that for similar events that someone else experiences (e.g., Baker-Ward et al., 1990). However, such predictions may not be applicable to individuals with autism. There are already suggestions that individuals with autism have specific...
This article seeks to examine some of the issues involved in the evaluation of practice by practitioners themselves. Five questions are posed which represent five different kinds of design suitable for the different purposes of evaluation in each case. For each question, an analysis is made of the problem that the question is addressing, an example...
Much controversy remains regarding the ability of children with autism to engage in spontaneous play. In this study children with autism, Down syndrome and typical development with verbal mental ages of approximately 2 years were assessed for play abilities at three data points. Even in this group of children with autism, who had relatively low ver...
The views expressed in this report are the authors' and do not necessarily reflect those of the Department for Education and Employment.
Although there has recently been considerable research interest in the difficulties that children with autism have engaging in pretend play, little attention has been paid to the ability of these children to imitate pretend play acts. Furthermore, suggestions that children with Down syndrome have relatively advanced abilities in pretend play have n...
This paper describes three theoretical positions relating to the difficulty in understanding the minds of others which is typically experienced by individuals with autism. Each ofthe competing theories is examined in terms of its implications for classroom practice rather than its veracity. Arguments for an approach to teaching that involves diagno...
This paper considers the way in which current notions of integration and curriculum entitlement may disadvantage pupils with exceptional needs. An illustrative case of a pupil with profound and multiple learning difficulties is discussed along with general issues of entitlement arising, and the implications for that individual. Through an examinati...
Clearly the one impressive case for the Option approach is well documented (Kaufman, 1976) but not objective; the evidence for others remains to be assessed and we are engaged in a follow-up of some of these cases in the U.K. at present. At present, there is insufficient evidence to justify promoting this particular method and there is a continuing...
In this paper, we discuss the deviant pattern of the development of thinking in autism and outline our thesis that the problem with autistic memory is in developing a personal episodic memory, and that this difficulty arises because of a deficit in the development of an experiencing self, which we have termed (after Brewer, 1986) an ‘ego‐self. We d...
Problems with language development have always been regarded as one of the key defining features of autism (Kanner, 1943; Rutter, 1978) and a considerable proportion of individuals with autism remain mute (Rutter, 1970). However, it is clear that autism is not a language disorder as such, in that structural aspects of language may remain intact (in...
We take previously developed principles of a problem-solving approach to teaching pupils with (Jordan & Powell, 1990a, 1990b, 1991), and analyze their application within the normal teaching routine of a specialist school for such pupils. We note the kinds of pedagogical judgment made, and the structures needed by individual pupils to enable them to...
This paper reviews the situation with regard to the teaching of thinking skills as part of the taught curriculum. The case is made for direct teaching of cognitive skills both to meet the particular learning difficulties of children with special educational needs and also to enhance the learning and thinking of all children. The dangers of ‘recipe’...
Eleven autistic children were compared to normally developing children and mentally handicapped children, matched by receptive vocabulary age, on their understanding and use of the personal pronouns ‘you’ and ‘me’. There were no significant differences between the groups in their comprehension of these terms, where the terms could be understood sim...
School of humanities and education PROLOGO La etiología del autismo y lo que creemos que es su causa subyacente han influido enormemente, a lo largo de los años, en los enfoques y métodos de trabajo con niños autistas. Este cambio de énfasis se ha traducido en trabajos innovadores e imaginativos, pero asimismo en métodos muy dudosos. Pruebas abruma...
Bibliografía pág. 72 El Proyecto EDUCAUTISME trata de responder a las necesidades de formación de profesionales vinculados al autismo a nivel europeo, tanto en calidad de formadores como personal de atención directa. Parte de una perspectiva global e individualizada; educativa y basada en el desarrollo del individuo, y persigue mejorar la calidad d...