Product Description

(2008 IPPY Awards: Bronze Medalist, Education/Academic/Testing)

Most of us use visual supports in our daily lives--for example, a shopping list, calendar, or a roadmap. Visual supports are particularly beneficial to people with autism because they help make abstract concepts concrete and capitalize on the user's inherent visual learning strengths.

VISUAL SUPPORTS FOR PEOPLE WITH AUTISM shows parents and educators how incorporating these aids while teaching can improve academic performance, behavior, interaction with others, and self-help skills. In a friendly, conversational-style, the authors, both certified behavior analysts, describe the deficits typical of autism--language, memory, temporal sequential skills, attention, motivation, and social skills--and present strategies to use visual supports to address those issues at school and home.

This guide presents an abundance of examples, illustrated by dozens of black & white and color photos, including: activity schedules; calendars; charts; checklists; color coding; flip books; graphic organizers; mnemonics; nametags; photo boards; Power Cards; scripts; Social Stories; to-do lists; and video modeling.

VISUAL SUPPORTS also explains considerations such as portability, durability, preferences, age appropriateness, and effectiveness. While visual supports can enhance learning, they should, however, eventually be eliminated to avoid over-dependence on them. An entire chapter describes different ways to fade visual supports.

With this book, there's no limit to what can be taught, from fostering social interaction by using a graphic organizer of conversational talking points to learning to put away toys from video modeling. Most of the visual supports presented in this book are low-tech and easy-to-use, making it simple for parents and professionals to create their own, suited to the needs of their students. Inspiring success stories will further motivate parents and professionals to get started.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #180888 in Books
• Published on: 2007-05-15
• Released on: 2007-05-25
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 226 pages

Review
Adding to the book's many practical suggestions are an informative chapter on how to fade visual supports when appropriate and an extensive list of references and recommended reading. --Library Journal, April 15, 2007

Clear, concise writing and abundant illustrations make this an ideal book for families, teachers, therapists, and anyone else working with people with autism or other developmental delays and those with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. --ADVANCE for Speech-Language Pathologists & Audiologists, January 21, 2008

About the Author
Marlene J. Cohen is the Director of Adult and Transitional Services at the Douglass Developmental Disabilities Center and a part-time lecturer for the Graduate School of Education, both located at Rutgers University in New Jersey. Donna L. Sloan is the Assistant Director of Adult and Transitional Services at the Douglass Developmental Disabilities Center. Both authors are Board Certified Behavior Analysts working with adolescents and adults on the autism spectrum. Dr. Cohen and Ms. Sloan live in central New Jersey.

Customer Reviews

Teacher needs pictures
This did not include pictures as I was hoping for but the information was excellent.

Book review
I really enjoy this book. It is very organized but unfortunately it isn't very colorful. There is a lot of helpful information in this book.

Not as helpful as I hoped
I have a 3 year old with autism. She hit a rough patch and I was hoping for ideas on visual cues to help with transitions. This book was not at all helpful to me as the cues are much better geared to school age kids, even older school age kids in my opinion.