Kerry: Welcome to today's webinar,
Using Practical Strategies to Obtain Critical Mass
in Emotional Understanding, Conversation
and Problem Solving.
My name is Kerry Mataya
and I live in the Birmingham, Alabama area.
I provide services for individuals
with autism spectrum disorders, mainly in the areas
of social development, problem solving,
perspective taking, academic, self-awareness,
behavior regulation and executive functioning.
During the day I hold contracts with school systems
after school, I do after-school social groups
and in the summer I do summer camps.
Don't we have a lot of fun?
So I absolutely love every part of what I do.
I did start this business
and I've been able to build on all the things that I love.
All right, so after attending this webinar
participants will number one
be able to define the educational meaning of critical mass.
Number two, learn the steps necessary
to obtain critical mass.
Number three, identify the three-part system
for improving emotional understanding.
Number four, verbalize the three parts
of the Conversation Framework needed
for a balanced conversation and number five
utilize the components of the Problem Solving Chart
and Advanced Problem Solving Chart
to explain how to work a student
through a problem situation.
In other words, we're gonna be talking
about a relatively new concept of critical mass.
We're gonna be defining it with educational meaning
and learning the steps necessary to obtain it.
Then we're gonna take that concept of critical mass
and try to apply it to emotional understanding,
conversation and problem solving.
So more simply, it just looks like this.
We'll talk about critical mass
and how to apply it to these three areas
of emotional understanding, conversation
and problem solving.
So I've tried to color code things
to keep us organized today, as we go through these sections
and we'll go ahead and start with critical mass.
So what is critical mass?
Critical mass is spontaneous generalization.
So after instruction and experiences
the learner can apply the information that they received
through instruction and experiences to new situations.
So what's happened is they've gained enough information
that they can now apply elsewhere.
They don't have to have instruction on that second part.
They just know enough information
that it automatically applies.
So if we look at the picture in the bottom right
the person's pushing a ball uphill.
When you're pushing anything uphill like that
it's gonna take a lot of energy and effort
and you're gonna be out of your comfort zone
and you might be sweating and it's hard
but there hits a certain point where you get
to the very top where you developed critical mass.
And at that point that's where you know enough,
you've worked hard enough, you've exerted enough energy
to where now everything is downhill, it's easier.
Okay, so again, you're like
pushing hard out of the comfort zone
you're setting new goals,
you're learning new things.
You're using a lot of energy.
Then you get to that tipping point of critical mass
and things now that you've learned, they make sense.
Aha, let me now apply them, but it's much, much easier.
Isn't it easier when you know how to do something
and you understand it well.
Isn't easier to apply it?
Exactly, so that's what we're going for is that moment
where that critical mass is achieved
to where everything is easier from here.
Okay, so in 2018, I coauthored a book
"Excelling with Autism: Obtaining Critical Mass
Using Deliberate Practice."
So I will be referring to that.
In the book we talk about what is deliberate practice.
So if we're gonna develop critical mass
using deliberate practice, what is it?
It's an intentional practice
but there are four components to it
and you're gonna use these four components
under the guidance of an expert coach
such as a teacher or mentor.
And that's important because as we're teaching students
with ASD for you, you may be that teacher
or maybe you're the coach
or mentor teaching other teachers how to teach.
And we're gonna be looking at these four specific areas
because if they're not embedded, then we're not
as intentional and systematic as we need to be
about using deliberate practice to learn anything
to the point of critical mass.
Okay, so who is Ericsson
and what was he talking about with deliberate practice?
Well, he's basically a Swedish psychologist.
He's internationally recognized as the researcher
in a psychological nature
of expertise and human performance.
So he wrote a book
"Peak: Secrets from the New Science of Expertise"
and it's absolutely fascinating.
He looks at expert performance when people have
really mastered music, chess sports, and he's really looking
at that concentration practice beyond one's comfort zone.
So, if somebody is gonna learn something
really, really well, many times they're gonna have
to push themselves out of the comfort zone to do something
that's hard to really make it to that next level.
He really is looking at how do expert performers
acquire their superior performance.
And there's so many quotes that he said
that I found either online or within his book
that I just thought were fascinating.
"If you as a parent,
have more or less just trained your child,
that's quite different
from preparing your child to be an independent performer
who's actually in control of their training
so that once they reach an adult level
they will be actually able to take over responsibility
for their development."
This is what we want for students with ASD.
We want responsibility for their development.
We want them in control of their training.
We want them wanting to know what they need to work on
and being able to work on it.
We wanna see independence.
We want them to be prepared for that.
I think that's awesome.
He also said,
"If you keep doing what you've been doing
you're gonna be limited
in how much you can actually improve your performance."
Okay, that's so true.
So maybe if we want different results
we have to do something different.
He also looks at motivational driving forces.
So what are the motivational driving forces
that really reward people for sustaining this commitment
to improving across a lifetime?
So if you think about people performing their craft
of chess or violin, people spend hours, countless hours
of practice becoming an expert in these areas
if they're wanting to be the best.
But I think of myself and here I am with flowers
in the bottom right corner
nobody had to tell me to research ASD.
And nobody's had to tell me
to stay up reading a book about it.
I am self motivated to learn.
So that really got me focused
like, how do I become an expert in this area?
Well, for me, it's learning.
And so I'm craving this learning.
I wanna be better.
I wanna know more.
I wanna become more of an expert on this topic
so I'm gonna research this topic within ASD.
And yes, I seek out mentors
but the motivation is on me to seek out those mentors.
And I'm gonna come back and apply that
but basically, there's a fundamental truth
about any sort of practice.
If you never push yourself
beyond your comfort zone, you will never improve.
And I found that to be true for me.
Okay, so if I never look at any more research
or if I never read more books that I'm not gonna improve
on what I know about ASD, well, I wanna improve.
So, I'm kind of pushing myself out of my comfort zone
spending time that I could be doing something easier
trying to interpret something
that may be a little bit harder.
Okay, so this makes sense to me.
I have done that many of times
to push myself beyond my comfort zone.
So this is great, yes, but let's take another look
at those four areas of deliberate practice.
How can we apply this information to someone with ASD?
And that's what I'm really fascinated by.
Okay well, to be able to do that I think we really need
to understand responses to conflict
because when the going gets tough and the tough get going
that's only partial amount of people.
Not everybody gets going
just the tough who are a lot of times the fighters.
They're gonna fight for what they want,
they're gonna keep going.
Some of those people are gonna be saying,
I can do it, I can do hard things.
But you also have the flight response
and the freeze response.
And those are also responses to conflict
that people either naturally have or they've learned.
So this is Unofficial Kerry Criteria.
You won't really find it online
but to me, this is how I interpreted my brain.
The fight response to conflict is the person who's like
I can win sometimes even I'm right
and they're gonna keep going forward.
They believe in what they believe in.
Okay, but you also have those who are flight.
I can escape, I don't have to be here.
Let's look though at the freeze response
I can't win or escape, I feel utterly helpless
and that one, if we're trying to get somebody
to achieve critical mass and get to that point
of spontaneous generalization
how do we do that when they won't even get started
because they feel utterly helpless.
So I think this is really important to understand
because the same way that somebody with ASD
is going to use deliberate practice be different
than neuro-typical peers or adults.
In this quote,
"Learned helplessness is the giving up reaction
the quitting response that follows
from the belief that whatever you do doesn't matter."
And Arnold Schwarzenegger said that
and this picture makes me so sad.
It just makes me think of a horse who's been tied
to a metal pole and it's just learned.
Hey when my reins are attached, I'm not going anywhere.
So even though it's attached to a plastic chair
that the horse could easily take anywhere it doesn't move
because it's learned the more I pull
it doesn't really matter.
So I think as we look at these four areas
of deliberate practice that are necessary
for achieving critical mass
what we really need to talk about is at Bridgeway Services
this is the company that I own in Birmingham, Alabama.
What worked for us?
And so for example, under developing specific
and meaningful goals while provide in categories.
I didn't even know it,
but we've been doing that since 2004, 2005
of trying to categorize things so we can explain it
that has helped our students to have better goals
and it's helped us to achieve critical mass
with many, many individuals.
Picking skills that are not implicitly learned
by students with ASD.
So like maybe flexibility is not naturally learned
and it's not necessarily something that people talk about
but we've over-focused at Bridgeway on flexibility.
So we actually say flexible equals willing to change
and I have a slide about that in the problem solving section
but we over-focused on that as a goal
and we work towards achieving critical mass in that area.
So I'm gonna fly through these because you can go back
and you can look at these and see what applies for you
but we're really gonna talk about them
throughout our time together on this webinar.
With those four areas of deliberate practice
we basically repeat the process over and over again
until spontaneous generalization occurs.
So we're looking for that it generalizes spontaneously
without having to teach them in every setting.
When I first started the business, the way I would say it
is when they get it, they've got it.
They understand it, they can apply it.
So if that's the case, what did they actually get?
They got increased self motivation, increased confidence
and self-esteem and increased experiences.
So there's a lot of important research
that's been done on categories
that's more related to knowing that people with ASD
interpret and form categories differently than others
or you may see research on students with ASD
paying more attention to detail rather than big picture.
But the research I wanna talk about with categories
is by Marjorie Bock.
So she successfully taught skills using categorization
in her research and then she discussed it.
So in one particular research study
that she did on sorting laundry
this is the information from the research.
Here at the very end
they found spontaneous skill generalization.
When I heard that I was on a plane
or when I read that, I guess
I was on a plane and I went, oh my gosh, oh my gosh.
I can not believe it
because when you categorize things,
you're able to teach them so comprehensively.
You're teaching the categories to look for
it makes sense to me
that spontaneous skill generalization occurs.
So if we're going to the point of critical mass
then there is a really good chance that we need to help
in the teaching phase set goals that involve categories.
Teach the categories.
That's been our key to success, defining the categories.
So our brain typically creates categories
to make sense of what we see.
If we were to walk into the room and see this
we might see a teacher and student
we might see boys and girls,
we might see smiling or not smiling.
Your brain is gonna start to categorize things.
Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday
fruits and vegetables, big and little.
But what if your brain
wasn't giving you the same categories?
So Temple Grandin and adult with ASD said in 1995
that before she learned to categorize
she processed each dog is unique
and did not group them as dogs.
Categories are very important to teach.
So when we teach them a lot of times,
we can get students to that ah-ha, I get it.
And that's where we want to be.
That tipping point of critical mass like, ah-ha, I get it.
Now I'm going to apply.
So in "Excelling With Autism"
we talk about a research study that was done in 2015.
40% of young adults with ASD never worked for pay
into their early 20s compared to 99%
of their typically developing peers.
They also looked at rates of independent living
81% live with family members or caregivers
which was consistent across the spectrum
from those who have a classic presentation of ASD
to those who have average to above average IQs.
So, even with all that we knew before 2015
that would those supports we were putting in place
we were not seeing huge percentages of employment
or living independently.
And that really needs to change.
When we are looking at developing critical mass
in social situations,
what we found in the "Excelling With Autism" book
is just the opportunity for practice and experience
was just low.
So in this chart, if we look at social play
for preschool students engage with others
during a one-hour playtime in 2007,
we find then the neuro-typical student
engaged in social play about 90% of the time
whereas a student with ASD engaged about 30% of the time.
That's a big amount of difference
if you think about social play
as being practice opportunities.
Same for when we're looking at play formats
for preschool children
we're looking at solitary play.
Look at all the black, where it says child with ASD
that black represent solitary play for preschool children.
Compare that to the NT child which is neuro-typical child
of the percent of time that the neuro-typical child
is engaged in solitary play, big difference.
Again, huge difference
in the amount of practice opportunities.
In "Excelling With Autism" we also talk about
a sample of skills that facilitate life success.
And I've just picked three from that
that we'll go into more detail about today.
So those three areas are emotional understanding,
conversation and problem solving.
So we're gonna look at using those four areas
of deliberate practice within the areas
of emotional understanding, conversation
and problem solving.
At the end of each section, I'm going to say,
give me three and I'm going to offer ways that you can say
give me three of, and whenever you're asking a student
with ASD to give you three of something
you're just asking for cognitive flexibility.
What happens at Bridgeway is that at first
the student may have no issues or hesitation
providing the first response.
Sometimes they do, if they're new
but the student takes longer to give response to
a lot of times, the response will be just out there
or it shows a lack of understanding of the topic.
But many times the student cannot think of a third response
no matter how much time has been provided.
You could allow 20 minutes to pass
and they still can't think of a third
unless you've been practicing the skill.
So when you're setting goals
this is an important skill to think through
how can you embed this within your goals?
So hopefully you guys are doing well
again, critical mass is spontaneous generalization.
So we're gonna be talking about emotional understanding.
How do we get to the point of spontaneously generalizing
emotional understanding to the point of critical mass?
How do we actually get the point
where now they get it, they've got it
now they're applying this information on their own.
So, today we're not talking about self-awareness,
we're not talking about self-regulation.
These are great resources for that
Kelly Mahler's "Interoception"
Dr. Brenda Smith Myles and Dr. Aspy's
"High-Functioning Autism and Difficult Moments."
Great resources for those areas.
We're just talking about emotional recognition for today.
So do they recognize whatever the emotion is
that the other person is feeling?
So these look like categories but I wanna point out
that some individuals with ASD get stuck,
they think that a person has to be covering their mouth
to show that they're tired, or they have to have pigtails
or if you look at the yellow chart
the girl in the bottom right
even though the students have different skin color
they're girl on the right is surprised.
and so some students learn you've got to have your hands
to the side and your mouth wide open to be surprised.
And so they're stuck on that.
So we need a little bit more variety.
Many times I see well-intended teachers and therapists
giving the answers rather than teaching a process
for students to figure it out on their own.
Some resources can even lead a child to the right answer
by the way that the question was asked
on the back of a picture card.
So for example, the picture card may say,
why is the little boy tired?
Now we've just told the student
that the little boy is tired.
They don't have to figure that out on their own.
And we're wondering
why do they not have critical mass in this area?
Why are they not spontaneously generalizing it?
They're not generalizing it because the way we taught
the goal and the way we taught the skill was giving them
the answer instead of teaching them to look for it.
If somebody doesn't know that somebody is tired
'cause they can't recognize it
then they're gonna do something different
because they don't even recognize it.
They're not gonna say a certain thing or act a certain way
because they didn't pick up on the emotion to begin with.
So what you're gonna see of how I've broken this down
is within each section,
right now we're talking about emotional understanding.
I'm gonna let you know when we're talking about
a specific area of deliberate practice.
So right now we're talking about the first area
of deliberate practice
which is developing specific and meaningful goals.
And so when we talk about this area
I'll give you this little chart and you'll see
that's what we're talking about.
So I have slides and I will provide
all of this in a document for you elsewhere
where you can look at these goals intensely
but basically the first thing is to set a specific
and meaningful goal that you can measure.
It's important to implement
and you would do that.
So here, if you look at the bottom one
your goal may be using pictures
that the student will identify subtle emotions of others
and we'll justify three reasons why the person
may feel that way, using ideas relevant to the picture.
Okay, maybe that's your goal.
Maybe you pick something from one of these other slides.
What you need to know is
there needs to be a process for mastery.
So you can set goals, but just know
if you practice recognizing skeptical
and you just practice it a picture cards
that may not lead you to critical mass.
To get more real life you may do picture cards
and then video clips and now natural environment.
So there still is a process for learning it
and you keep that in the back of your mind
when you're doing goal setting.
When I'm doing goal setting
I always determine the categories first.
So these are a couple of visuals
that will give you copies of
that have just made it the test of time at Bridgeway.
We've had so many students use these categories
that I have confidence that for many of you
if you try to implement these soon
that they will work for you.
So we teach kids to look at face, body, objects.
We teach them to look for eyebrows, eyes and mouth
when they look at the face
and when they're looking at the face
we try to get them to interpret whatever they need to
from the eyebrows, eyes and mouth
and figure out what emotion that would be.
We do have two different sets.
One would be just regular emotion words
the other one's advanced.
Why do we have two lists?
Because if you look at the middle top
of the advanced emotion words, it says flirtatious.
I don't teach flirtatious to a kindergarten student.
Okay, it just doesn't go on their list.
You can adapt these to fit the needs of your student
but for the most part, you want to give a comprehensive
or as comprehensive list as you can
that has the majority of emotion words
that your student will see
and if they're all on one list
they're gonna do a lot better learning that skill
in the categories so well
that it moves to the point of critical mass.
When you're goal setting, these are things to think of.
I take all of those emotion words
and I make a file folder for each one of those words
and then I find Google images.
So here I would Google search angry
and I might find these pictures.
I think it's important to have young and old,
guy and girl, different skin colors.
Here would be a Google search of confused.
I want people to know that if they see that one top picture
in the top left for the boy touching his head
that that has only one person confused.
You don't have to be touching your head to be confused
but these all provide great opportunities
to look at eyebrows and the differences in their eyebrows
but you can very easily see that crease
and how the eyebrows are narrowing in.
So we talk about that.
A lot of times when people are confused, they might do that
but it can also mean something else.
Within deliberate practice we wanna set those goals
of what it is that we're working on
but we also need to ensure focus.
So we're gonna be talking about the area
of deliberate practice of ensuring focus.
If you use video clips, keep them short.
We're not talking about 20 minutes
and then we go back and talk about it.
We're talking about a 10 second clip.
We're talking about 20 second clip.
Most of my students already have time with attention
so they're not really going to get much
out of a 20 minute clip.
If it's something that's really hard
and we need to break it down along the way.
Use visual supports until the categories are mastered.
That helps ensure focus
that they're looking at the right categories.
Create still pictures when needed from the video
and I'm gonna show you how I've done that before
but that makes it easier to break down
the face, body and objects.
Provide encouragement, support
pause the video as much as necessary
and take as much time as needed
possibly coming back to it next session or week.
Instead of giving the student the answer
I would much rather you ensure their focused
on learning the process and say, you know what?
Let's stop this for today.
We will come back to this next week
and then come back to it next week.
And sometimes that break between
can also help a student to ensure focus.
Always, always, always prompt the process not the answer.
So this is what I've created for all of our staff.
If they're gonna do an inference session with somebody
they would say what's happening in the picture.
Okay, it could be that, anything else?
Basically you get down to the point where
if they don't get it right
then we break it down by face, body, objects.
Let's look at their faces.
What do you notice about his face?
Say they don't notice anything
then we break it down even further
into the categories of eyebrows, eyes, and mouth.
Let's look at his eyebrows.
What are his eyebrows doing?
Are they up, down, narrowed?
Just make sure that you're not giving the answer.
So many times people without even thinking about it
are like see how his eyebrows are down.
So are they down?
And just because the student says, yes
doesn't mean that they actually got it correct.
They were just answering questions that you asked
and it seemed to be that
because that was the only option you gave.
So when they look at this picture,
I would want them to work towards seeing
the eyebrows, eyes and mouth that he sad
but then I'd go a step further
if my goal was the one we talked about earlier
to give three reasons why he might be feeling that way
I would want them to pick up the fact that
it looks like he's at the beach.
So what are three reasons why he'd be sad?
Well, one is maybe he got to the beach
and realized he didn't have his bathing suit.
A second one and it needs to be completely different answer
is maybe his mom told him it was time to go
and he wasn't ready so he had to get back on his clothes
and head home.
Those are the sorts of things when looking at a picture card
that I would want them to be able to do.
The third area of deliberate practice
in the area of emotional understanding
is just communicating outcomes.
And this one's fairly simple.
Whatever your goal is, communicate it.
I'm going to ask you to give me three reasons
of why he might be sad.
So now they know that they're gonna be
giving you three reasons.
A lot of times we'll use the feedback
from those Manila folders.
If they say that emotion is annoyed
and it's really not annoyed,
then I will take the emotion file out of annoyed
and we compare it side by side
with whatever we're looking at
and we kind of talk through it
and I communicate the whole time of
I'm gonna look through everything that you think it is
and we're gonna compare
and we're gonna take your answer seriously
and we're gonna really study it.
And I'm communicating all of that to my students.
In the fourth area of deliberate practice in the section
of emotional understanding,
it's just assisting the learner
to move out of his or her comfort zone.
So pick age-appropriate and realistic
picture cards and video clips.
Sometimes the picture cards and video clips
that we use are just too easy.
So move them out of the comfort zone.
That's going to help towards getting
that spontaneous generalization
where they're able to do it in real life.
If you're using only picture cards, start using video clips
start using more subtle emotions when ready
and to keep yourself organized
maybe you pick five or 10 emotions
that you'll practice first.
Linguists systems has a couple of cards sets
but I just wanted to say, I use a lot of these
but I don't read this stuff on the back, if I'm being honest
but it's the way that I teach you is just different.
In this picture, I have students that will say
that the person in purple is breaking into the car
and the person in the blue is calling for help.
And whenever you realize a person with ASD
interprets the picture like that
and you realize I need to teach face, body, objects
because part of the objects and the way we talk about it
is they would notice that sun, they would notice the dog.
They would notice the tongue sticking out
and when they notice those things,
I mean it's usually like when you point out the sun
or you start dragging your fingers
so they label all the objects they go, oh,
because they didn't even notice it to begin with
because they're not scanning the same way you and I might
but whatever you're using, go back to those categories
and keep teaching the categories
so you're prompting the process, not the answer.
So this would be a video clip that I'd use
from "Dolphin Tale" this is how I'd use it.
We might freeze frame on the scene,
look at eyebrows, eyes and mouth.
We might try to get them to figure out
what the emotion is that he might be feeling.
It's pretty typical that you can label
several different emotions
and if they can justify why he'd be afraid,
why he'd be shocked in a bad way,
why he'd be surprised in a bad way.
I'll go with that if it makes sense.
Then we might look over to the mom.
Let's look at her eyebrows, eyes and mouth.
She's smiling but her eyebrows are down
that's usually negative
and so that gives us a real life subtle opportunity
to talk about what that emotion is.
And again, it doesn't have to be one emotion
it can be several.
For older kids, I might use this kind of clip
with "This Is Us"
and if we just look at Mandy Moore on the right
let's just look at her eyebrows, eyes and mouth.
We're looking her eyebrows eyes and mouth.
It's starting to change.
Wow, her eyebrows have really changed there
which means her emotion has probably changed too.
So we keep watching it
and each one of these freeze frames
we have paused the video to really talk about.
And then at the end of this little part
they show the hands and she pulled her hand away
which also tells us information.
This is why I love video clips.
They just provide a play-by-play of changing of emotions
but if a student watches that three to five second clip
and they watch it in real time, they miss all of it.
A lot of times, if they've not practiced video clips before
they're very, very relevant.
So, as I said I would give you an embedded skill
that you can embed in the emotional recognition piece
and we've sort of talked about this throughout
but just give me three emotions that could be.
Give me three reasons
he or she might be feeling that emotion
but I want you to do this intentionally embedded it in
because it will make a big difference.
All right, so hopefully you all are doing okay.
We're making some good time here.
So let's go into conversation.
Conversation is what you see and what you hear.
I think a lot of times we think of conversation
as being what you hear
but it's also what you see.
So you can look up a couple of these resources
they're fun, basically Volkswagen Beetle Commercial.
My students usually think he's a robber
but he does pay for what he is purchasing
and in the car, the guy in the green mask says,
"Hey, you do realize you left your mask on."
Well, because my students with ASD see the mask
and they think robber they miss all those other clues
but that whole scene, it's also conversation.
It's two people talking and they're missing it.
They're missing it because what they see
in the video is confusing them.
So we need to make sure when we're teaching conversation
that we're also teaching what is seen.
So it's what is seen and heard.
Movie clip "Pursuit of Happyness."
It's a lot of dialogue.
You've got Will Smith that runs out of an apartment.
He looks panicked.
He says to the guy at the cash register
in the red shirt,
"Hey have you seen Linda and Christopher."
At the same time,
the other guy with a blue, long sleeve shirt he is saying,
"Hey, did you see that Neti game?"
And it's important in this conversation to realize
that the guy in the blue that's asking
about the Neti game completely misses the fact
that Will Smith's characters panicked
and he's looking for someone.
This whole clip and I think for my clip,
it's maybe 40 seconds
is so confusing to students from Asperger's.
So if you wanna go recreate this
you can just pull up "The Pursuit of Happyness."
It was put out in 2006 and you can find the scene
within there where he's looking for Linda and Christopher.
There's some really good scenes in there
that you can use for more advanced students.
All right, so I just wanna make sure
we're on the same page about conversation.
For me, it's what you see and hear
and you need to get to the point
if you're gonna have critical mass
in the area of conversation that you get
to what you see and hear.
So let's go ahead and talk about developing specific goals
in the area of conversation.
So I've attached several of them here.
You can go back and look at these later
it has to do with telling stories, asking questions.
Many people are good at writing goals for conversation.
I would also say we provide a process for mastery
that we'll talk about in a minute
that it's a step-by-step process.
When we're determining goals.
It's also important to determine the categories.
Is your student working on what the topic is?
Are they working on recognizing light, medium and heavy?
Are they working on asking questions, telling stories
making comments, what are the categories?
These are a couple that I use
at Bridgeway Services with students
and these are also things that I wrote
about in the book "Talk With Me" that I co-authored
which is a step-by-step conversation framework
for teaching conversational balance and fluency.
I want the conversation to be balanced.
I want it to be fluent.
Here's the steps there.
Step one, step two, step three
and the right here
we say that step one is identifying the topic.
It's really hard to join in a topic
if you don't know what the topic is.
So if the topic is always given, it's no shock
that the student isn't developing critical mass in that area
to spontaneously generalize it
because they're missing a whole step
that they needed to learn.
So there was the research study that was done in 2015
where they were looking at transition into young adulthood.
Basically they did percentages and found out
as conversation ability, increased basically connection
feeling of connection increased
and so did the lack of social isolation.
Social isolation decreased
as conversation ability increased.
So the more somebody was able to talk
the less socially isolated they felt
but what I loved is that as conversation ability increased
so somebody is better at conversation
so did the percentage of young adults
who ever had a job in their early 20s.
So we're seeing a higher percentage of people ever employed.
It doesn't mean that they kept their job
but basically the more conversational they were
the more had been employed
at some point in time during their early 20s.
So basically, wow!
I mean like conversing employment it's telling me
that there is some connection between the two.
So as I said, in our conversation framework
step one would be identifying the topic.
There's times when you're just trying
to have the student listen to an audio
and you want them to pick out
whatever the conversation topic is.
So I'm gonna play this, not the whole thing
but I want you to hear this guy's voice
because some students,
they get used to hearing certain voices
and they don't understand when somebody talks like.
Narrator: One thing that football does is
it prepares the player to perform well after football.
Kerry: So some people will say
that was really hard to hear.
It was hard to hear
but this is also helping a student to achieve critical mass
in this area to figure out the topic.
If they only could pick out
the topic when mom and dad are talking
they're gonna be at a huge disadvantage later in life.
Sometimes in step one, we're talking about, all right
you've heard the topic.
Yes, the topic is on pets,
but was the topic light, medium or heavy?
Because I've had students switch from their dog passing away
and somebody else says speaking of pets,
blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
Okay, yes the topic appeared to be pets
but it was pets very heavy
and now you're telling a funny story about your dog
and you've switch it to a light conversation.
You missed the topic.
So at this step
these are some of the things that you need to work on.
These are some of the categories that you needed to define.
Step two, once you're able to identify the topic
in step one, you move on to step two
and that's balancing the conversation with questions
stories, comments, within zero to two seconds.
This is what a balanced conversation
would look like with four people.
So you see that with four people
you may get two, three stories
you're getting a few more stories
but everybody's participating
and I always say to be balanced
you have to have something in every column
asking questions, telling stories, making comments
but you also have to try to be balanced with everybody else.
So if you've told five stories,
whoa, that's great that you've got something in that column
but if nobody else has any in the telling stories column,
then you're out of balance.
You're out of balance with the people.
So you're either out of balance with yourself
or you're out of balance with the other people.
So if you look at the top unbalanced
even though person four is asking a lot of questions
they're out of balance with the other people
because maybe they're asking so many questions
that the other people can't jump in
but you'll also see this if the group is mismatched
and you've got one person who's super social, talks a lot
and the other people who are just quiet.
In the past when I've put together a group,
I've had a group of really quiet people
so that they're not overshadowed.
And so the other person
doesn't have to taper themselves back
'cause if I need them to taper themselves back
but if they're having to completely mute themselves
to wait 45 seconds for somebody to ask the question
I don't know that I'm teaching that person correctly
to his needs.
In a larger group, this is what a balanced
conversation would look like
and I just want you to see that.
Usually if you have eight people
telling stories is going to be a lot less
because each person really, even in a longer conversation
only has time to tell about one or two stories
but you will see a much higher level
of making comments because every story that's told
I want the other people engaging
to show that they're listening.
All right, so label your paper.
You can use this as data collection,
questions, stories, comments
you can do it on a dry erase board
and take a picture of it after.
But it's pretty simple
you don't have to have anything fancy
to do that tallying mark chart.
This would be another visual support
that I would use is just question starters
if certain students need prompts.
I try not to tell them exactly what to ask,
but I will give them a list of question starters
to help them get along their way
if they're working on that part
of questions, stories, comments.
So once they've mastered asking questions, telling stories
making comments within zero to two seconds
then we move on to bridging the topic.
And I will be honest it took me seven years
to realize that this was a step.
I had a student she and her peer
were having a four and a half minute conversation
on chocolate.
And I like chocolate but four and a half minutes
talking about it was a little much for me.
Basically, they didn't know how to get
from chocolate to another topic
and that opened my eyes tremendously.
So we basically use the same chart
from step one where they're figuring out the topic
except for here we write down the starting topic
of what they're talking about
and then we go down the list and say
is that part of people in lives?
Yes.
School? No.
Job? No.
Hobbies and interests?
Yes.
And we go down and we basically give them
the broader category so that
say, they're talking about pets.
Does pets have to do with people in lives?
Yes.
So if I'm gonna bridge the topic
I might say, speaking of things going on with you
I know you've got a dog, but what else is going on?
And that helps me get from dogs
and pets to things going on in their life
and there's no telling at that point
what they're gonna say.
It could be that they are reading a book
that they watch to show,
that they had a snow day
and it will get you completely over to a different topic.
So those would all be goals that we had set
and remember, we would set the categories.
The categories are really, really important
in developing specific and meaningful goals.
But now let's talk about ensuring focus.
Use age-appropriate audio clips
to replicate a group conversation when needed.
I cannot tell you how important this is.
Keep the audio clips short and manageable.
Again, you don't want a 20 minute audio clip.
It's just not manageable.
A lot of times we're having to pause so much and go back.
If you're insuring focus,
pause the audio clip as much as necessary.
Sometimes you're going to pause it after
whoever's on the audio says three words
'cause I have some students that
when they go to repeat back what was said
they're not even hearing the vocabulary the same way.
If you're doing the tally mark chart to ensure focus
don't allow a 20 minute conversation to go on
without saying, so-and-so, you've asked this many questions,
you've told this many stories.
They need to check in to kind of know where they stand
but you don't want 20 minutes to go by
and be practicing wrong
because they didn't ask any questions in that period
if that's their goal.
As I said in the previous section
use visual supports until the categories are mastered
provide encouragement, support, take as much time as needed
possibly coming back to something the next week.
So if you're insuring focus
you're also increasing motivation.
So you've got to increase the motivation.
The more motivated somebody is the more focused they are.
So sometimes I'll say things like
conversation is only asking questions,
telling stories and making comments.
You have to do one of those three things
to be in the conversation.
I'm gonna help you get good at it
and I may say that to be encouraging,
but also to say it's not as hard as you're thinking it is.
It's only these three sections and you can learn it.
It makes it manageable which for a lot of people
helps motivate them.
As I said, in the previous section
prompt the process not the answer
The third area of developing critical mass
using deliberate practice is communicating outcomes.
So how do we do that in conversation?
I mean, again, communicate the expectations.
I'm going to ask you to give me at least
three follow-up questions that you could ask.
And so also in communicating outcomes
you may have a peer that gives feedback.
You may have a peer that says,
hey, I used to be working on asking questions,
I learned it and listen to Ms. Kerry,
it really works, it's a lot easier for me now
and sometimes when a peer is communicating the outcome
that the student's gonna have,
oh my gosh, it makes my life so much easier
and I see progress more quickly, I see that buy-in.
When you're communicating outcomes
this tally mark chart is helping you to do that.
I am expecting you to have something in these columns.
I'm expecting for it to be balanced.
This type of data collection is immediate feedback.
It helps ensure focus,
it communicates outcomes
and it's also long-term data on specific goals.
It's helpful in all these areas
needed for deliberate practice.
And lastly, in this section we need to assist the learner
to move out of his or her comfort zone.
A couple of things I'm gonna point out here
is if a student is not ready for conversation with peers
create or use an audio clip
to replicate the pace of the conversation.
I do have some groups that I have permission to audio record
and say, I have one person in the group
that's still working on figuring out the topic.
I will audio record the others
and then either before the group next week
or at the end of group we'll go back and listen
to parts of that audio recording
and see if they can figure out the topic.
We would use the audio clips
they've been very, very helpful.
You can have a student ask a question on familiar setting.
You can have a student stand up while having conversation.
Some are so comfortable being behind a table
and sitting down that the reason why it's not generalizing
is they're not pushed out of their comfort zone
to do it while standing up.
Maybe they're not pushed to do it
with having background noise
so those would be embedded in part of your goals.
Push them out of their comfort zone.
Add a new person to the structured conversation setting.
Maybe they're used to the people that they talk with.
Consider going from a group conversation
to a one-on-one conversation.
Group conversations can make it a lot easier.
Go from a smaller group to a larger group.
The timing can be a lot more difficult.
You will see that to be true.
If somebody is used to jumping in and timing being easy,
try jumping in when you have eight to 10 people
it's a lot harder if you haven't practiced it.
So push your student out of the comfort zone.
And then lastly, in this section, again,
the embedded skill of give me three,
you can say, if you're working on mastering
the conversation topics list, you can say
give me three topics from the conversation topics list
and they've got to come up with three
or give me three topics you can talk about with him or her.
Give me three up questions on topic.
Give me three different ways to bridge that topic.
I did that yesterday at group.
So if you said, give me three up questions on topic,
a lot of times I'll point to the person
and they know that that's what they're supposed to do.
And then almost point up to the ceiling
and then I come back and point them again
and they know that's the second follow-up question
point up on the ceiling, back at them again.
They know that that's the third follow-up question.
And then that way I'm not having to prompt throughout.
They know what's expected
but they also know I'm gonna get them to ask
three follow-up questions that helps
with the cognitive flexibility.
All right, so hopefully you all are doing well.
We are gonna move to our third and final section,
which is problem solving.
This is random but basically just giving you some ideas
for things that you can look up online
if you're looking for video clips
this is something I would use for high school kids.
"It's Not About the Nail."
Basically Google search it if you're looking
for a cool video clip that helps with problem solving
and figuring out what the problem is.
Basically what you see if you haven't seen it before.
You're welcome.
We'll just leave it at that.
Again, I would say high school and up age kids,
it's a lot of fun.
So let's jump right into the four areas
of deliberate practice.
Number one, again,
we need to develop specific and meaningful goals.
So this section I'm gonna help you all out.
So I've created a checklist of problem solving goals
for individuals with high-functioning ASD.
This was created in 2016, it's fairly comprehensive
although it's not completely comprehensive
it just has goal setting ideas
and you can look at a few here but it is very practical
and I bet you'll be able to find something
within all those pages that would work
in developing specific
and meaningful goals for problem solving.
Problem solving is a little bit tricky
because there's so many different ways to go with it.
I don't say here's my process for conversation
or here's my process for learning emotional understanding.
Those to me are a little bit easier.
The process of what I usually use is the levels of learning.
These are 1984 levels of learning research article
awareness, recognition, recall,
application, generalization, maintenance.
You're gonna wanna go through
each of those sections with problem solving.
As I've said in the other things
when you're setting goals, determine the categories.
So there are a lot of categories that I'm about to give you
but basically this is Problem Solving Chart
and the Advanced Problem Solving Chart.
I'm terrible at naming things, I'm sorry
but they are practical and that is what I call them.
You can call them something different.
These are some more categories.
What worked, what didn't work, what to do differently.
There's a group work evaluation based off
of those three things where you give a little more detail
some more categories are compromising
and the categories could be majority vote
first, and then brainstorm.
So let's talk about those in more detail.
What is the Problem Solving Chart?
It's basically an evidence-based strategy
to teach individual problem solving skills.
So it's basically helping the student with ASD
to solve his or her own problem.
So they would come up with a problem situation
and then we look at here are four options
of how you can solve that.
You can seek help from an adult.
You can talk it out and compromise.
You can let it go move on, or you can let it bother you.
Which one are you gonna do?
This right here can take somebody six months,
eight months to learn.
You're not gonna embed it in one day and it start working
and I think a lot of teachers would love for that to happen.
They'll say it didn't work.
I tried it this week.
You have to embed it in a lot of real life situations
and be talking through the same situations.
Many times you'll have a student saying
I let it go and move on
and they did, they're still letting it bother them.
So they really have to learn
how to understand those categories.
And as you see on this, it says, ignore and move on
and I'm saying, let it go.
This was the original chart and it did say ignore
and I had a student that said,
"You're making me feel like I have to ignore my problem
and that's not okay to have feelings."
And that's why we changed the wording.
This has been tested with a lot of people
and it has been very successful.
We do have variations of it.
You can put pictures with it
or this is probably the most common variation
is that for some people we'd add
the take a five minute break
and in that adding, taking a five minute break
we didn't put that in the main chart
because all students don't need it.
And if you start teaching a kid to take a five minute break
when they don't need one, I think that that's a disservice.
So everybody can choose from those other four options
of seeking help, talking it out compromise,
letting it go, moving on and letting it bother you
but this five minute break is just for those people
who really need a chill
before they handle something that's hard.
So eventually over time
kids did better with the problem solving chart.
And then I found, hey, there is an issue with a teacher
and they're not solving it
but man, they're so good at problem solving.
Why is that?
And then this chart was created
and it's basically where a student with ASD
had a hard time correctly identifying
the other person's problem
but if they were able to figure out
the other person's problem,
then their solution would have been different.
This offers a level of perspective taking
and it gets away from solving my own problem
to now I'm gonna solve my own problem
within our problem.
And so step one is my problem.
Step two is their problem.
Step three is our problem together
and how we're gonna solve it.
This has been really successful too.
If you have questions about how to use this
you're welcome to email me or ask me additional questions.
Today I'm giving you an overview of these things
so that you know that they're possible.
I would say that most of you are gonna be able to take in
and implement it by just looking at this chart.
Other categories and skills to teach
in problem solving is flexible.
A lot of times we'll teach flexible, willing to change.
It lends itself very nicely to just yes or no.
Were you willing to change?
Yes or no.
A lot of times at first
most of my students are not flexible.
Especially if you're working on a skill
you may have to tie it to external reinforcement.
Another area that I showed
on a previous slide was compromising.
These are the categories of compromising
majority vote, first then, brainstorming.
Rock paper scissors is a way that you can compromise
but you're not gonna see 30 year olds in a board meeting
doing rock paper scissors or flipping a coin.
You're gonna see the team of people voting
and they're gonna go with what the majority says
and if they can't agree
then first they're gonna try Susan's idea
and then they're gonna try Matthew's idea.
Those things are very acceptable at the upper ages.
So I wanted to come up with categories to compromise
that are timeless.
This was out of necessity.
I realized that many of my students did not go back
and self-reflect what was working
and make changes about what was not working.
And so we did this at a science camp
when I watched a group of four kids basically go up
and repeat the same mistake over and over again.
My hair turned gray instantly that day
and the next day I came back with what worked
what didn't work, what to do differently
and we've been using it for problem-solving ever since
this provides great categories, it's great goals
and it can really help towards self-reflection
and then goal setting for what to do differently.
This is another fun one that we've used.
It's basically in my mind a backwards first then.
The bottom is still the then, but it's like
say I want to stay in class.
Well, if I want to stay in class, what do I need to do?
I need to sit in my chair or I need to listen.
I need to be quiet.
I need to raise my hand.
Whatever it is that they need to do in the positive
to be able to get whatever's in that second box.
This is a version of problem solving.
These are some of the categories that you can have
and goals that you can have for your student
just depending on who you're working with.
This is one of my favorites.
It's really based on just basic cognitive behavioral therapy
where your thoughts become your feelings
your feelings become your actions
and your actions influenced the outcome
or result that you receive.
Basic cognitive behavioral therapy.
I've just made it really visual.
What I'm teaching a student here is
if you have a negative thought
it's gonna go all the way down that track.
So if you want a green outcome, a good outcome
you're not gonna get that from a red thought.
So you would have to change your thoughts to get over there.
This is another way I've showed it to them
is basically red is gonna lead to red.
Green is gonna lead to green.
You don't have red leading to green or green leading red
and that makes sense for some kids
if you wanted to make a binder of these
and use it for data collection
then here is a version of this chart
that has just the green outline and the red outline
so that it prints more easily
but the students still get the color coding.
Again, this is a version of problem solving
and solving problems that may be something
that you need to work on with your student
and it would be a goal that you would set.
I just wanna show you some of the categories that I use
and there's a lot I know, it's crazy.
I love problem solving.
All right, so those are a few of the goals
probably the majority of the goals
that I would have for students about problem solving.
You kind of just pick one of those and go with it.
Again, I've got that whole checklist
that you can look through
to find other great goals on problem solving.
Then let's use this other area
of deliberate practice and ensure focus.
You've got to get their buy-in.
I would always decide
on one main problem solving goal at a time.
You're not gonna work on all those visual supports at once.
In fact, please don't.
Pick one that is really needed
and kind of move forward with it.
You're gonna use that visual support
until the categories mastered and along with the other one,
encouragement, support take as much time as needed
possibly coming back to it the next week.
All right, so if we're talking about
motivation and problem solving
I've just outlined a couple of steps
that I think are super important.
Number one, the student has got to agree
that what he or she is doing is a problem.
And if they don't, then you're gonna have a hard time
teaching problem solving.
So you've got to show them somehow that it is a problem
and many times you saying that it's a problem
and it bothers you is not gonna impact your student
with ASD whatsoever.
So just like other students think,
they don't care whether their students think,
in fact, they'll stop caring about
whether the students think if you mentioned that.
So they've got to have buy-in
and agree that what they're doing is a problem
but you've got to find something that impacts them.
Number two, the student has to understand
why it's a problem
and number three, they've got to have opportunities
to practice replacement skills and experience success.
Think about how much negativity
many of our students with ASD experience
in these problems situations.
They go back to that learned helplessness
that I'm just gonna give up on trying
'cause it didn't work.
And many times you'll find a student says,
in first grade I had a teacher that...
and they've held onto one memory
where they didn't have success
and therefore they will never try it again
and you've got to break past that.
Providing successful opportunities is key.
This was in one of our groups and at overnight camp.
And I will say this shows just Mr. Brad
teaching the skill of how to compromise
and then this shows them at overnight camp
there's zero adults over there.
They're leading a majority vote on their own.
It does transfer.
Scripting can also be an effective way to ensure focus.
Oh, well, no big deal.
I can't tell you how many kids I've worked with
on just that phrase.
They're gonna feel like it's a big deal
or I'll try, it's huge.
So we use scripting with hundreds of kids
to learn to say things to replace
whatever that negative thing is that they're wanting to say
and if you need to pair additional reinforcement with that
then do.
Yesterday I was at a school
and there's a kid that doesn't wanna leave the classroom
when he's upset
and one of the things that we're gonna try
and I've tried it with several students before
and this is just the student is basically if he gets up
and he leaves the room quietly and calmly when asked
he is gonna get five minutes of an electronic break
and so I had to talk to the teacher
about whether or not he would take advantage of that
and when he gets it and how
and again, I've had it really work
because I've had to place this external reinforcement
with a very specific behavior
and with the student, it's like, okay, no big deal
he needs to get up and walk out
but he's gonna be learning this phrase.
The third area of deliberate practice
and problem solving is communicating outcomes.
So communicate your expectations.
We're gonna go back
and we're gonna discuss this afterwards.
We're gonna see how it went.
Use data collection to track strategies used
and effectiveness
and a lot of times I'll share
those sorts of things with students.
Remember when this went well,
you can use picture and video feedback
on the goals to communicate the outcomes.
Also, as I mentioned in the previous section
receive peer feedback.
Sometimes peers communicating the outcomes
of what can happen can be so effective.
Here's some examples of data collection.
At the very least, if you use the Problem Solving Chart
seek help from adult, maybe in this pretest
that's what they always do.
They always are tattle telling and seeking help
and having somebody else do it for them.
Talk it out and compromise, rarely.
Let it go move on, rarely.
For some kids, I put never in several of those columns.
Let it bother you sometimes.
If you want to get more detailed
you can use this Problem Solving Effectiveness chart.
You would be looking at the effectiveness
whether things were prompted or independent.
You're just getting a little bit more information.
I've even added this into point charts.
So for student after each class
we had questions that he would have to answer
so we would track his response and then the adult response
and if they matched then he would get two points.
If they matched and it was like no response here.
So like, did I complain?
No, the adults said no, two points
but if he said ,yes,
and the adult said, yes, he would get one point for honesty
and that was because this student needed to work on it.
But what I want to point out
can you tell where he had issues with letting things go?
If you look where it says circle
and it says let a problem go
and PE is an extra five points.
Let a problem go in math or civics, extra 10 points.
Walk into the hallway when asked
without complaining extra 10 points.
Okay, can you tell where we were having issues?
When we put those extra points
this worked for the student
and this is all about individualizing
but we were working on it problem solving.
And lastly, the fourth area is just assisting the learner
to move out of his or her comfort zone.
So we may have them initiate the majority vote.
We may have them lead the discussion on what worked.
A lot of times if they have to lead the problem solving
it can be a lot harder.
And lastly, embedded skill would be, give me three.
Give me three things that worked.
Give me three things that didn't work.
Give me three things you could do in that situation.
Give me three things that may be causing the problem.
Three things that might happen,
three clues that helped you know that.
What are three things you noticed?
But I'm always telling kids to give me three.
We are at the conclusion of our webinar
but stay on for just a second.
We will do the questions at the end.
I wanna thank TASN so much for having me on.
It is a privilege to share this with you.
I know I've given you a lot of information.
As a thank you,
you are welcome to use my visual supports
for your personal use within your home or school.
These visual supports are not to be used
for sale or mass distribution.
Please, please, please be respectful to use the resources
for the intended use of helping students with ASD
to understand difficult concepts.
Remember that a support is only a support
if it's necessary and helpful.
I try to only use supports when they're necessary
and when they're helpful.
And I just want to share something
that a social group leader, she came up and saw our staff.
Since we talked about conversation,
one of the things I wanna highlight that she sent me was,
"I was dismayed to see that my teens
couldn't carry on an on-topic conversation
for more than one and a half minutes
without becoming silent
or making a drastic change in topic."
Why is that?
Because before she was providing the topic
she had it structured for their success, that was awesome
but we weren't really teaching the categories
and therefore we weren't seeing the transfer of skills.
So in this one area
we wanna see the categorical teaching
teach the categories, teach them to think
on their own and you will see big change.
All right, so again, thank you for joining me.
It has been a privilege.