Helping Autistic Children Through Behavior Analysis by Dr. Spencer Mathews, Associate Professor of Psychology While on sabbatical leave in 1997, I went to UCLA to study the groundbreaking work of Ivar Lovaas and his staff, who had developed early intervention procedures that netted tremendously effective results with autistic children. Historically, 95% of children with this diagnosis have required life-long supervised living arrangements, but 47% (9 out of 19) of the children who participated in the UCLA work were brought to the point within two years where they were able to lead normal lives. They progressed through public school with their age mates and were evaluated as falling within the normal range by testers who did not know that the children had ever been diagnosed with autism or that they had been exposed to specialized intervention. Upon returning to Converse, I developed a course entitled “Early Intervention in Autism” for the spring of 1998. I was not prepared for the tremendous reaction from parents of autistic children who place great importance upon this kind of intervention. I no longer recall when the first phone call came, but since the spring of 1998 my students and I have responded to parent requests by organizing intervention teams for local children in the Upstate of South Carolina. When children are diagnosed with autism, they are typically severely developmentally delayed. Usually the diagnosis will not be made until the age of three or later, and at that time the child will have the repertoire of roughly a one-year old. At that point, two year’s worth of developmentally appropriate skills must be taught during each year of intervention in order for the child to catch up. Because children have the best chance to catch up when intervention begins before they have fallen too far behind, teachers are in essence engaged in a race.  The repertoire that we use with the child is not merely an academic one. The child must certainly learn pre-academic material, but that alone would leave the entire social repertoire undeveloped. Therefore, we teach them to converse, to appreciate the rudiments of humor, to recognize when things are silly, and to play. If we succeed, then by age five the child will have the repertoire of a five-year old and can begin kindergarten.  Often we cannot begin intervention until some of the behavioral wreckage that has evolved during the child’s first three years is rectified. Sometimes children have learned things that stand in the way of our efforts to teach; things such as avoiding eye contact, or tantrumming when demands are made. A few have learned to engage in self-injurious acts.  A competent intervention involves a team of teachers, each one conducting one or two 2-hour sessions each week. It begins at the earliest possible age, usually three to three-and-a-half. It requires 35-40 hours of one-to-one teaching each week in the home. When all goes well, it takes roughly two years. For best-outcome children, that two-year period culminates in transitioning the child into a normative kindergarten classroom. The home program is then used to troubleshoot academic and social problems that arise in the school setting.  Working with autistic children is usually very rewarding. The style of the intervention is structured such that there are very few opportunities for the child to be incorrect. Being correct earns high-energy approval from the tutor, usually accompanied by a reinforcement (bubbles, M&Ms, tickles, etc.). Being incorrect is typically followed by a flat, informational “Nope, try again” and a repetition of the request. The difference is very easy for the kids to detect and many of them progress rapidly. Early tasks are quite easy: “Come here,” “Sit down,” and “Look at me.” If the child can’t do these things, the tutor physically guides him or her through the behavior and then provides a reward. Children typically begin to be affectionate with tutors, which seems to be the one thing we don’t have to teach. Their smiles and hugs and laughter are a large part of our rewards. When the day comes that a child can easily do something that was previously possible only with guidance, it is cause for celebrations within the team. Nothing can compare to having a sensible conversation with a child about some current interest when only 18 months prior he was non-verbal and wouldn’t even look you in the eye. Perhaps there is one thing that can compare: observing that child blend so thoroughly with 15-18 normative kindergarten classmates that no observer would identify him as one who once was diagnosed with autism.

580 East Main Street, Spartanburg, SC 29302
  email: admissions@converse.edu 

contact webmaster