Special Needs

With the dramatic increase in the diagnosis rate for Autism Spectrum Disorder (ADS) over the last five years, researchers have found few strategies that are helpful in developing social skills for autistic teens.  A recent report on the Science Daily website describes a promising method that is effective and available at a low cost.
Joshua Plavnick, assistant professor of special education at Michigan State University, acknowledges that strategies for ASD adolescents must be “effective and practical,” and he and his colleagues have found that regular video-based group instruction provides significant gains in various social behaviors.  The video teaching techniques that he and his colleagues published their findings in the research journal Exceptional Children that “the students demonstrated a rapid increase in the level of complex social behaviors each time video-based group instruction was used.”  What’s more, those students retained those behaviors even when the videos were not used as often.  The newly-acquired skills transferred to the students’ homes as well.  Parents reported on anonymous surveys that they were highly satisfied; one even reported that the student started asking family members to play games together, and this was a new behavior.
This instructional strategy seems promising.  It addresses the needs for a rapidly increasing group, and it is cost effective for schools.