1. When My Worries Get Too Big! Kari Dunn Buron kari@5pointscale.com
The Incredible 5-Point Scale and Other
Pretty Good Ideas for Teaching
Students on the Autism Spectrum
When My Worries Get Too Big! Kari Dunn Buron
Kari Dunn Buron and Mitzi Curtis

2. Main Points of This Morning's Talk
Autism involves a difference in social thinking
Neuroscience and Education are talking to each other
When teaching social information to people with ASD, it is best to teach to their learning strengths.

3. Both Leo Kanner and Hans Asperger cited social difficulties as the #1 deficit of ASD

4. How can these two guys be on the same spectrum?
Joey
IQ 130
Fluent in 2 languages
Masters from Harvard
Violinist
Eddie
IQ 30
Nonverbal
Group home
Supported work

5. I think the fundamental aspect of autism – the feature that you must have to be considered autistic – is either an absence or an impairment of the social instinct. Lorna Wing

6. Dr. Ami Klin (Yale): Autism is first and foremost, a social disorder.

7. A new area of science: Social Cognitive Neuroscience
International Mind, Brain, Education Society
Harvard and Cambridge programs

8. Social Cognition affects:
How a person understands other people
How a person manipulates other people
How a person repairs social interactions
The level of comfort one has in social settings
Challenging behavior and issues of emotional regulation that can result from social confusion and social anxiety

9. Understanding why people do what they do
Mind Blindness or Problems of Theory of Mind Simon Baron Cohen Someone has difficulty with:
Understanding why people do what they do
Understanding the impact your behavior has on others / adjusting to fit in
Predicting another person’s behavior
Can create confusion and fear in social situations
Begins to develop at birth

10. I didn’t lack empathy. I often felt deeply for other people, but I didn’t know the right way to express those feelings.
Dan Coulter

11. 14 month olds show joint attention – not
just looking at a face but also paying
attention to what another person is
interested in.

12. Geraldine Dawson – 1st
Birthday
4 Behaviors noted:
eye contact
pointing
shows objects
turns to name

13. Social learning happens so
early, it is like breathing.

14. From birth, babies begin to study and
understand people.

15. Children with autism seem to study and
understand things.

16. SMALL GROUP STOP AND THINK EXERCISE
Read your card.
Discuss how the challenge described is related to a problem of social cognition.

17. So what specific skills are associated with Social Cognition?

18. Reading Eyes – Simon Baron Cohen
36 set of eyes
Overall females scored higher than males but males scored higher than AS.
Study included adults only
Quiz

19. Show me your work.

20. Some of the skills identified
Reading eyes and faces
Reading body language
Using effective body language (body and voice)
Understanding the need to think about how other people think
Negative self-talk
Emotional regulation

21. Face processing provides the foundation for developing Theory of Mind (TOM)

22. Understanding Competence
If you are good at social skills then you are probably very socially competent
We avoid things we do not feel competent in
Behavior problems (escape) can be signs of feeling incompetent
We know that the use of repetition and predictability is a good way to increase feelings of competence

23. Implications? Need for direct teaching
Need to learn about or teach subtle social skills
When writing IEP goals or setting personal goals there is a need to break social thinking into workable parts
Need to look outside traditional behavioral sciences to understand social cognition

24. Controversy: hand movement and understanding intentions
Mirror Neurons
May prompt a baby to
mimic parent’s face,
leading to the
development
of what we call empathy
Controversy: hand movement and
understanding intentions

25. Enactive Mind learning theory
Implied Goal areas?
Imitation
Acting
Video modeling
Active practice
Enactive Mind learning theory

26. Simon Baron Cohen The Empathizing-Systemizing Theory
The drive to create systems for increased understanding.
Theory: people with ASD have Hyper-systemizing and Hypo-empathizing.
Systems are rule governed and predictable.
This is a strength based theory

27. Systems seen across the spectrum
Sensory: food issues, tapping services
Motoric: spinning, patterns
Collecting: stickers, lists
Numerical: calendars, math
Motion: watching washing machines spin
Spatial: routes, drawing
Environmental: lining up
Social: saying first half of sentence and wait for someone to finish it
Natural systems: repetitive questions
Mechanical: VCR
Vocal: echoing
Actions: watching same video over and over
Music: same tune over and over

28. Relative
weakness
in emotionalizing
Use a
system
to teach social
emotional
concepts
Strength in
systemizing