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Teaching Students With Autism Spectrum Disorders
By: Susan M. Catlett, Ph.D
Sensory
Odd
responses to pain
Sensitivities to light, hearing, touch,
smell, and/or taste
May result in self-stimulatory behaviors in
an attempt to produce endorphins
to counteract
over-stimulation
Resistive to touching certain textures
May dislike being touched
Auditory hypersensitivities very
common
Rigid food repertoires
Auditory Sensitivity
"I was
rarely able to hear sentences because my hearing distorted them. I was
sometimes able to hear a word or two at the start and understand it and then the
next lot of words sort of merged into one another and I could not make head nor
tail of it....Sometimes when other kids spoke to me I could scarcely hear them
and sometimes they sounded like bullets..."
Darren White (1987)
Sensory Sensitivity
"I had
just come from another classroom where I had been tortured by sharp white
fluorescent light, which made reflections bounce off everything. It
made the room lace busily in a constant state of change. Light and
shadow dancing on people's faces as they spoke turned the scene into an animated
cartoon. Now, in this noisy classroom, I felt that I was standing at the
meeting point of several long tunnels. Blah-blah-blah echoed,
bouncing noise wall to wall. I looked at the cheerful, placid faces
of the others; clearly, I was the freak.
Donna Williams (1994)
Play
Lack of spontaneous
play
Lack of imaginative play
Don't spontaneously imitate actions of others
Sustained odd play
Lack of interest in toys
Motor
Postural
abnormalities - toe walking
Gross motor clumsiness
Difficulty with motor planning
Fine motor difficulties
May have difficulty with rhythm
Balance - may be very coordinated, or
under-coordinated
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