What are Visual Strategies?



Why Do Visual Strategies Help??It is critically important to understand the learning style of students so the most effective teaching can occur. Recognizing that students have different learning styles leads to the discovery that most students with autism spectrum disorders and many others with communication or behavior challenges are visual learners. That means they understand what they see better than what they hear. Yet we tend to communicate with them primarily with talking.??It is typical for teachers and parents to presume that students understand everything that is said to them. Frequently they do not. In fact, many of the behavior and social skill problems that these students demonstrate can be linked to a lack of understanding.?As we observe students, we discover that many of them demonstrate a strength in understanding visual information compared to their ability to respond to what they hear. Using visual strategies to support communication provides an effective way to improve both understanding and expressive communication.?For many students with communication challenges, the use of visually supported communication is more effective and efficient than just talking to them. Visual tools assist students in processing language, organizing their thinking, remembering information and many other skills necessary to participate effectively.?Consider this example: Auditory information is fleeting. It is there and then it is gone. It is transient. That means it comes and then it disappears.?Social interaction requires lots of shifting . . . back and forth . . . from person to person. Effective communication requires the ability to rapidly establish attention and shift attention. We take in information and process it. Then we formulate responses appropriate for the situation. These steps need to happen quickly because social life moves and changes continually.?Our targeted students may experience difficulty accomplishing these skills at the speed necessary to participate effectively in communication interactions. They can have difficulty rapidly establishing or shifting attention. Auditory information may disappear before students have a chance to pay attention enough to take in what is being said. They may miss a lot of information. Students may be accurately interpreting only fragments of communication messages. ?Using visual strategies helps. The visual cues help students to establish attention.? Visual information stays there long enough for the student to see it, take in the information and respond to it. It is non-transient. It doesn't fly away. Students can go back over and over if they need, to understand and remember.?What are Visual Strategies??They are things that we see. Body movements, environmental cues, pictures, objects and written language can all be used to support communication. Our environment is full of signs and logos and objects and other things that support communication. In addition, we can create our own specially designed visual tools to help meet specific communication needs. Using visual schedules, choice boards, tools to give information, tools to manage behavior and lots of other visual strategies can make a significant difference in a student's ability to participate successfully in school and home routines.??????? ???We call them visual strategies, visual supports or visual tools. Sometimes we refer to visually supported communication. What these terms mean is that we are using something visual to help individuals understand communication better.??????????? Visual strategies help individuals in many ways.?We use visual strategies to help us communicate information TO individuals. Visual tools help students organize their thinking. Visual supports are used to give choices or communicate rules. One of the most important uses for visual strategies is to give information such as what is happening, what is not happening, what is changing, etc. ?You can create visual tools to give students the information they need to help them participate successfully in all the routines and activities in their lives.??????? There are lots of options. Schedules and calendars are the most common visual tools used to give students information. Step-by-step directions, choice boards, and classroom rules provide structure in classrooms. They help students by creating an environment that is more predictable and understandable.??? ??????? ??? ??? ?Using visually supported communication is an extremely helpful approach for students with communication and behavior challenges. Visual strategies help students learn effective communication, appropriate social interaction, and positive behavior. Many people use a few visual tools with students. Few people explore all the possibilities. Who Can Benefit from Visual Strategies??Lots of people benefit from using visual strategies. Do you use a day planner or a calendar or write notes to yourself to help you remember? Then you use visual strategies. ?All students can benefit from having visual supports to help them remember and understand. But using visual supports can be particularly helpful for students with special learning difficulties.?It is important to realize that visual strategies are used to help students UNDERSTAND better.? They help students understand what we are telling them.? They help students comprehend more about what is happening in their lives.? Visual strategies provide a way to help with memory and organizing thinking.? With the use of visual supports, many students are able to demonstrate more appropriate behavior and social skills in their life situations.?Visual strategies are exceptionally helpful for students with communication or behavior or learning challenges or other special needs, including those with: ??????? Autism Asperger's Syndrome PDD Fragile X syndrome Attention Deficit Disorders Nonverbal Learning Disabilities Learning Disability Bilingual Hearing Impairment Down Syndrome Emotional Impairment ??? Communication Disorder Behavior DisorderLanguage Delay or DisorderComprehension Problems Auditory Processing Disorder Aphasia Speech Disorder Mental Impairment Developmental Delay Multi-handicapped And many more... Visual Strategies and Behavior in Autism Spectrum Disorders?Students with Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD) and related communication challenges experience significant difficulties in behavior and social skills.? The difficulties they have can often be related to communication in two ways.? First, these students cannot express themselves effectively.? Second, they don’t understand.? They don’t understand what they are supposed to do or not do.? They may be confused about what is happening or not happening.?The list goes on.????? ???? The use of visual strategies can build a bridge toward effective communication. Visual strategies can provide the support necessary for students to develop appropriate skills for effective participation in life activities.?????Most of these students with ASD and related communication challenges are visual learners!? This observation has tremendous implications. Capitalizing on their strengths, the use of visual strategies alters many social, communication, behavior and educational challenges.?While it is common for educational programming to focus on the development of communication skills for these students, that focus tends to be directed toward developing their expressive communication skills.? Comparatively little attention is directed toward increasing the student’s ability to understand the communication in his life.?For these individuals, their struggle with communication is far more complicated than just the development of verbal language. Understanding the communication of others, trying to figure out what is happening or not happening, handling changes and transitions, and interpreting cues and signals in the environment can all be areas of difficulty that result in frustration and behavior that is seen as disruptive.?At the same time, research demonstrates that most of these students display a relative strength in visual skills compared to their auditory abilities.? Visual strategies capitalize on that strength.? Using visual strategies to support communication helps students organize their lives, significantly reduces behavior problems and increases functional communication.? This is accomplished in part by developing a system of visual tools and aids to increase comprehension.? Schedules, aids to give directions, tools to give information, and visual supports to establish and communicate rules are some of the tools designed to increase the student’s understanding of what’s happening around him.??????? ?? Visual tools and supports are not magic. They won’t fix every problem that students have, but they will provide a valuable framework to support their lives. Implementing a system of visual tools and supports significantly reduces various behavior problems and increases effective communication interactions for most students.??? ????? ? ?The principle of visually supported communication is simple; the impact on the functioning of most students with these individuals, however, is profound.? While many people use a few visual tools in their homes and education environments, few use this medium of communication support nearly as much as would be beneficial for these students.??The book Solving Behavior Problems in Autism provides an assessment tool that leads the reader to discover the causes of behavior problems and then to develop solutions to those problems.?What is the Research??There is an increasing amount of research that validates the use of visual strategies to support communication. Research is also confirming the challenges these individuals have processing auditory information.Here is one recent example.??Scans Show Sound-Processing Deficits in Autistic Kids Unique brain wave patterns, spotted for the first time in autistic children, could help explain why the children have so much trouble communicating. Communication issues may stem from delays detected in processing of sounds. They process sounds a fraction of a second slower than other children. That delay is only a fraction of a second, but when it's for every sound, the lag time can cascade into a major obstacle in speaking and understanding people. Imagine if it took a tiny bit longer than normal to understand each syllable. By the end of a whole sentence, one would be confused. "This delay in processing certain types and streams of sound may underpin the subsequent language processing and communication impairment seen in autistic children," researcher Timothy Roberts, vice chair of research in the department of radiology at Children's Hospital of Philadelphia, said in a news release issued by the RSNA. It is uncertain whether the patterns found in the study exist in all autistic children University of Texas - Paper presented at Radiological Society of North America 2009 ???These studies demonstrate successful use of visuals strategies?for many purposes ??THE USE OF VISUAL SUPPORTS TO FACILITATE TRANSITIONS OF STUDENTS WITH AUTISMVisual supports were used to aid transitions from one activity to another for two elementary boys.? Data revealed significant decrease in the latency between the time the students were given instructions and the time they began the next activity when the visual supports were used. Visual supports also resulted in a significant decrease in teacher-delivered verbal prompts and physical prompts during transition. Dettmer, S., Simpson, R.L., Myles, B.S., & Ganz, J.B.? (2000).? Focus on Autism and Other Developmental Disabilities, 15, 163-169. ??USING AN ACTIVITY SCHEDULE TO SMOOTH SCHOOL TRANSITIONS Functional assessment of a preschool child's aggressive and disruptive behaviors identified antecedent conditions associated with difficulties during transitions from one activity to another.? A schedule board produced a dramatic decrease in aggression and increase in cooperative behavior in the classroom. Journal of Positive Behavior Interventions, Vol. 3, No. 1, 57-61 (2001)??TEACHING DAILY LIVING SKILLS TO CHILDREN WITH AUTISM IN UNSUPERVISED SETTINGS THROUGH PICTORIAL SELF-MANAGEMENTStudy of 3 low-functioning children (ages 6-9) with autism found children could successfully use pictures to manage their self-care behavior in the absence of a treatment provider, generalize their behavior across settings and tasks, and maintain behaviors at follow-up. When picture order was manipulated, subjects followed the new picture sequence.? Pierce, K.L. & Schreibman, L. (1994). . Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis, Vol. 27, No. 3, pp. 471-481??EFFECTS OF USING PHOTOGRAPHIC CUEING PACKAGE DURING ROUTINE SCHOOL TRANSITIONS WITH A CHILD WHO HAS AUTISMPhoto cues were used for teaching a 6-year-old with autism to make successful transitions in daily routines.? Providing advance notice of an activity change using combined verbal and photo cues helped reduce child's tantrums while increasing number of appropriate transitions.? Schmit, J., Alper, S., Raschke, D., & Ryndak, D. (2000). . Mental Retardation, 38, 131-137.? ?USING AN INSTRUCTIONAL PACKAGE INCLUDING VIDEO TECHNOLOGY TO TEACH SELF-HELP SKILLS TO ELEMENTARY?Video modeling and video prompting were used to?successfully teach 3 self-help skills (cleaning sunglasses, putting on a wrist watch, and zipping a jacket) to 3 elementary students with mental disabilities.?? JM Norman, BC Collins, JW Schuster - Journal of Special Education Technology, 2001??There are many more studies that have demonstrated successful use of visual strategies to improve communication, reduce or eliminate many behavior challenges and teach appropriate social skills to help individuals with Autism Spectrum Disorders and those with related learning difficulties to participate in life opportunities with success.?? ................
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