Academic preparation is vital too, because the standards may be higher, with fewer supports available. Parents can help students on the autism spectrum prepare for the transition to adulthood by working on skills such as organization and planning that will become more important when mom and dad are no longer keeping the calendar. ![]() But among options are college programs with special tracks for students with autism and others that provide a college-like experience that gives students opportunities to live with peers and learn independent living skills, such as cooking, cleaning and navigating public transit. Volkmar has taught two students with high-functioning autism at Yale-that’s not realistic for all. While some high-functioning students may be able to attend a regular college, even a rigorous one-Dr. A highlight in his own career has been seeing how this translates into the lives of his patients, he adds. “It has been a tradition at Yale to be able to provide high quality care in a strong academic environment,” he says. Volkmar says.Īlso beneficial is the close connection between research and clinical practice, Dr. The idea was the brainchild of an undergraduate student, Dr. ![]() An example now in development uses virtual reality to teach social skills, such as for dating and job interviews. Volkmar appreciates “getting a chance to learn from younger people developing new ideas and approaches who come into the field fresh, with no preconceptions.”Īnd, he says, their new ideas inspire innovations that can quickly make their way into treatment. We offer unique approaches to therapy that can make this important life transition go far more smoothly. At the Child Study Center, we have decades of experience working with young adults on the autism spectrum and we offer many therapeutic approaches to help them transition into adulthood. Advance preparation for the changes that lie ahead increases the odds that a child will do well in the real world. “It’s especially difficult for children on the autism spectrum because their whole support system changes, fundamentally and radically.”įortunately, today’s knowledge has yielded treatments that can effectively prepare many teens and young adults with autism to function well in college and beyond. Volkmar, MD, a Yale Medicine Child Study Center psychiatrist. The transition to adulthood is challenging for everyone, says Fred R. Is college realistic? What kind of job might be a good fit? Will he or she ever live away from home? These are understandable concerns. Dogs, on the other hand, don’t stay so trusting.The normal worries every parent has about how a child will adjust to adult life are magnified when that child is on the autism spectrum. Or, as lead study author Angie Johnston put it in a statement: “Consider all the important, but seemingly irrelevant, actions that children are successfully able to learn, such as washing their hands and brushing their teeth.” To a little kid who doesn’t yet understand hygiene, those things don’t make much sense - but you learn to do them anyway, and the reasoning comes later. It’s a tendency the authors of this latest study refer to as “overimitation,” writing: “This pattern of results suggests that overimitation may be a unique feature of human social learning,” possibly because by uncritically copying what they see, “children generally limit the amount of time they need to spend learning through repeated trial and error.” ![]() Their puzzle was more complicated, but they tended to repeat the experimenters’ actions step for step each time, without ever pausing to think through or weed out the irrelevant ones. The study offers an interesting insight into dog cognition in its own right, but it also has another layer: The authors based their study on a similar one from 2005 that focused on children instead of dogs - and compared to the dogs, the kids weren’t nearly so savvy. The dogs, who each went a couple rounds with the puzzle, proved adept at figuring out not only what they needed to do, but also what they didn’t: As the experiment progressed, they began disregarding the lever, going straight for the step that would get them their treat. To make sure the dogs were really trying to solve the task in front of them, rather than following a perceived command, the study authors then left the room and left the animals to their own devices. In reality, the puzzle was just one step - all the dogs had to do was lift the lid of a box - but the researchers added an extra, unnecessary action to their demo, pushing a lever attached to the box that didn’t actually do anything. Your Dog Wants Praise Even More Than It Wants a Snackįor the study, which recruited 40 pet dogs of varying breeds, psychologists from Yale’s Canine Cognition Center placed a treat inside a puzzle, then demonstrated to their subjects how to get it out.
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