Teaching Children with Autism How to Communicate Their Wants and Needs

Handouts for Dr. Moskowitz's talk are online at https://www.autism.org/wp-content/upl...

Free certificates of participation are available upon successful completion of a brief knowledge quiz at: https://www.autism.org/understanding-...

When children with autism engage in challenging behaviors (such as aggression, self-injury, tantrums, etc.), it is typically because they are trying to communicate some want or need, but they do not have a better way to get their needs met. If we can determine the communicative “messages” of the children's challenging behavior and teach them to communicate the same message in a better way (a process known as Functional Communication Training [FCT]), their challenging behavior would not be necessary and would therefore be reduced. Presented by Lauren Moskowitz, PhD.

This is a joint presentation by ARI and The World Autism Organisation.

00:00 - Intro
1:00 - Communication in children with autism
3:55 - Communication impairment and challenging behaviors
5:25 - Challenging behaviors as functions of communication
9:40 - Functions of communication
11:18 - How to teach children with autism to communicate wants and needs
12:55 - Principle of functional equivalence
13:50 - How to identify the function
15:50 - ABC flowchart and examples
21:00 - Creating function-based behavior interventions
23:10 - Building replacement skills
24:10 - Functional communication training
25:36 - Replacement skills for gaining attention
27:54 - Replacement skills for escaping disliked activities
29:27 - Replacement skills for obtaining tangible item/activity
30:12 - Replacement skills for obtaining sensory stimulation
32:03 - What communication skills to teach?
32:40 - How will communication skills be taught?
34:17 - How to ensure communication skills will be used?
37:03 - When to teach communication skills?
38:30 - FCT Case Example - Eli
48:37 - Competing with challenging behaviors
50:23 - Learning to tolerate delays
53:12 - Notes from Dr. Stephen Edelson, Executive Director at ARI
56:20 - Q & A