A Tutorial: An Integrative Framework Use in Intervention Planning for Children with Autism

Two physicians, Kanner in 1943 (American), and Asperger in 1944 (Austrian), described almost simultaneously children who exhibited a ‘unique syndrome’ they named Autism-from the Greek ‘autos-self’. Their case descriptions include core deficits suffered by children with Autism (ASD): 1. Social Impairments- inability to relate to others and contexts in ordinary ways; failure to form social attachments with children and adults, 2. Rigidity and Preservation of sameness- a strong impulse to play with the same objects in the same way in the same sequence, and 3. Communication- weak desire to communicate and poor social-pragmatic skills. These underlie the ASD symptoms described in the DSM-5. Children with Autism share profiles, but they differ in their needs, preferences, and severity of symptoms which may include behaviour problems, and co-morbidity with other neurodevelopmental disorders. This tutorial proposes an integrative and multidimensional approach to forming an intervention plan designed to address the different but related core deficits in these children. The theoretical principals underlying this approach are: contextualism as explained by Jenkins- memory is strongest for contextualized words and language (includes semantic processing), Vygotskian social learning theory and Brunner’s scaffold metaphor, and Halliday’s functional theory of language. These principles are embedded in Pauline Gibbon’s framework for planning language lessons. The goals of this tutorial are 1. to demonstrate the usefulness of this framework to clinicians in intervening with children with ASD of all ages, 2. to show its adaptability for construction of an integrative and multidimensional approach, and 3. to encourage construction of rubrics to track progress in achievement of explicit intervention goals targeted in the plan.