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Autism Spectrum Disorder (2015)

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Autism Spectrum Disorder
When thinking about disabilities, there are many that come to mind. However, the autism spectrum disorders are where I will focus my attention. When you hear the words autism spectrum disorders, what comes to mind? For me, the word spectrum stands out and makes me think of something like a scale, range, or continuum of severity. In fact, Hallahan, Kauffman, and Pullen (2015) state that the word spectrum emphasizes that the disabilities associated with autism spectrum disorders fall on a continuum from relatively mild to severe. (p. 211) It is my goal to show that while ‘people’ in general see the negatives, there are positives to identify as well. It is important to be able to identify characteristics of the disability …show more content…

(2015), impaired social communication can include communicative intent, joint attention, and pragmatics. (p. 217) These are very important as most people are able to pick up these skills by watching and interacting with other people. Hallahan et al. (2015) describes this as the hidden curriculum, “dos and don’ts” of everyday living. If you think about how education is shifting to a cooperative learning environment, this will have a dramatic effect on students with autism. I can only imagine how the learning could be impacted negatively by being put in small groups when you cannot interact socially on the same level. Remember this is a spectrum and under the least restrictive environment outlined in the IDEA some of these students may be in classrooms where this is occurring. Ideally the teacher would be able to notice the discrepancies and implement a form of intervention that would help the …show more content…

While that could have been for many reasons, it is also a characteristic of a person with autism. These types of behaviors are considered to be repetitive behaviors. Another behavior addressed by Hallahan et al. (2015) is restrictive behavior. (p. 218) Restricted behavior is associated with fascinations or a small range of interests. Basically, this means that the person has an extreme interest in certain objects and little to no interest in other objects. I have seen this in students I observed during practicums. One of the students had an extreme fascination with trains while the other was drawn to construction equipment in general. When introduced to other topics or ideas, the focus was almost immediately

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