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Attention skills are so important. They're an integral part
of how we get connected with people, and the world around us,
and how we learn. So when they go wrong,
things get difficult very quickly, and in autism,
they go wrong very frequently.
How can it be? But if we go back to basics,
and ask ourselves, "Are our activities actually irresistible?
Are they worthy of the child's attention?
Are they so good they'd want to do them anyway?"
And, again, if we're reflecting back to basics,
we should remember that when children are having a good time,
or when they anticipate having fun, they will join in much more readily
and you will get engagement attached to good memories.
But autism does make it more complicated.
How can it be there's a child that can lie for 20 minutes,
looking at the wheels on a train, and yet when you want to show them
something, you get only a fleeting moment?
We tend to resort to typical styles of intervention.
We give the child information, and then we ask a question.
The man is riding a bicycle. What is he doing?
It doesn't work with autism! They can't see the point,
and you need social skills in communication in order to comply.
So things get confusing very quickly. Not just for the child,
but for us as well. How can we find a way forward?
I think we could think about the autism learning strengths
instead of the things that are going wrong.
These children are fantastically visual, and that gives us a way forward,
and they have amazing memories. For things they value,
for things they find interesting, you will get the most passionate
engagement and memories that potentially are planted for life.
What a wonderful thing to be so sure that you've given
a child something that memorable.
But we do need to be thinking about how we are going to create
really good quality engagement. I'm not talking about the fleeting look
when they ran past it, or the look that is prompted
by somebody telling you, "Sitting! Looking!"
Or the engagement that's is won through reward.
We want spontaneous engagement. But we should remember,
attention skills develop. We develop from being highly distractable,
to being able to do two things at once in a distracting environment.
It happens over time. But if we combine
this developmental psychology with good autism strategies,
we can find an intervention and move forward.
And that's really where the Attention Autism Program came from.
It is a four stage program with incremental steps.
First stage, the bucket. Focus your attention.
I've got something in my bucket, in my bucket, in my bucket.
I've got something in my bucket, I wonder what it is.
Oooh! Wow.
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If we can offer a series of quick objects coming out of a bucket,
we can teach a child how to focus, and then we can move on
to the attention builder, a fabulous activity!
Great to watch from start to finish, that lasts a little bit longer.
And in this way, we can use hundreds of different activities
to plant these ideas, rehearse them, and embed them as a skill for the child.
We're looking really to get the child focused and attentive
for longer periods of time, but with lots and lots of lateral progression.
Lots of different ways of doing it. And then we add stage three,
where we teach a child how to shift their attention.
We use all the language of turn taking, but it's possible for autistic children
to learn this skill without ever necessarily understanding
the social side of it. So the child watches an activity,
takes their turn, shifts their attention to their own participation,
and then back to the group. And in stage four, we add
all the previous skills together, and put in a transition.
A child will watch a demonstration as one of a group,
collect their kit, take it to a group table,
where they work with the rest of the group together,
through to completion of whatever it is, though it's the process
rather than the end result with these activities.
And then they rejoin the group so that we can celebrate what we've done.
Shared good times make fantastic memories, and this structure can provide
a framework where we can nurture social skills, communication,
and thinking skills. We aim for 20 minutes
within six weeks of the intervention starting.
So where are we going to begin? Let's start...
Go visual, and let's be memorable.
(laughter)
Thank you very much, indeed.
(applause)