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Ideas About Autism | |
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PASS Info Video Modeling Sample Video Book Order Form Review of Authors Work Vitamin A Links How to contact us Recommended Reading |
Ideas About Autism is a site set-up to give parents, educators, researchers and PhD Candidates innovative ideas on ways to approach autism. | |
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Diagnosing autism in children at a young age is complicated and the treatment is even more complex. Unfortunately, autism is more common than the average person might believe. It is estimated to occur in approximately 1 in 294 individuals(Center for Disease Control Autism Prevalence Study for Metropolitan Atlanta, 2002). Although autism is a disability with diagnostic criteria, it is also a spectrum disorder. This means that no two children with autism will have identical autistic characteristics: some are verbal, some are non-verbal; some have social skills, some have no social skills; some have repetitive behaviors, some do not. In order to find the most appropriate treatment, parents and educators have a formidable challenge. It is our intention to provide parents, educators and researchers assistance in finding solutions to this most formidable challenge. From the educational perspective, we offer the idea of using video modeling to teach children with autism. It is a teaching method that may speed up the rate of learning and may also provide a way of getting through in cases where traditional teaching strategies have been unsuccessful. Children that love to watch videos and television are great candidates for this teaching method. Rather than spending precious time memorizing irrelevant scripts, with video instruction you can tailor the scripted language in your videos to a more functional purpose. From the medical perspective, we would like to encourage researchers to investigate the possibility that there may be genetic defect in the processing of vitamin A (the retinoids), which may cause autism. This is an idea that was first proposed almost thirty years ago. It is now again getting attention by the medical community. The research about a possible relationship between autism and the retinoids will undoubtedly be moving along at an accelerated pace now that the scientific community has a greater knowledge base about both the retinoids and autism. Finding the link between these two fascinating, but complicated areas will be a significant discovery. to liisa@ideasaboutautism.com Copyright 2001 Liisa Neumann. All rights reserved. |