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Autism

Services provided to meet the needs of individuals with autism include:

  • Social Communication including: joint attention, social orienting, establishing shared attention, monitoring emotional states and considering another's intention, social reciprocity- initiating bids for interaction, maintaining interactions by taking turns and responding contingently to bids for interaction initiated by others.

  • Language and Related Cognitive Skills: understanding and using nonverbal and verbal communication, symbolic play, literacy and executive functioning.

  • Emotional Regulation: effectively regulating one's emotional state and behavior while focusing attention to salient aspects of the environment and engaging in social interaction.

  • Behavior: We work to understand the relationship between challenging behavior and communication and understand that challenging behavior can serve one or more communication and/or emotional regulatory functions. Functional assessments of challenging and/or unconventional behavior helps us identify the possible functions of the behavior.

  • The use of positive behavior support to address challenging behavior includes: ·         formulation of behavior hypothesis, prevention strategies, replacement skills,  partner response in a positive manner.

We evaluate the long term effectiveness of behavioral interventions aimed at decreasing challenging behaviors. We aim to recognize the potential communication functions of challenging behaviors and design environments to support positive behavior; embracing a broad view of  communication by assessing and enhancing the following: initiation of spontaneous communication in functional activities across social partners and settings, comprehension of verbal and nonverbal communication in social, academic and community settings, communication for a range of social functions that are reciprocal and promote the development of friendships and improve quality of life, verbal and nonverbal means of communication including:  natural gestures, speech, signs, pictures, written words and other AAC systems