Helping Children with Autism
Learn
By Bryna Siegel, Ph.D.
Why Is Imitation Important?
Imitation is a very crucial conduit
through which the one- to four-year-old child normally takes in a
tremendous amount of information. Throughout that period of
development when language has not yet been established as an
internalized means of narrating and planning behavior and problem
solving, imitative schema (maps) guide typically developing children
through practice and mastery of new skills. Originally, psychologists
referred to key aspects of this process as "assimilation," meaning
that the child would first see something new, and then take parts of
what she saw into herself and reenact what had been observed as
self-initiated activity. Later, the child could be described as taking
the newly acquired information and being able to use it to
"accommodate" variations on the theme: A toddler seeing a new type of
sand toy in the sand pit at the playground might be expected to first
watch as a slightly older child added sand, turned a crank, and
extruded small blobs of sand. If this looked incredibly interesting to
the toddler, she might be expected to run up to the toy and either
join in, or, if she was a more shy child, wait for the older child to
leave the toy alone, and then pounce on a chance to imitate what she
had just seen. That imitation of the first child's use of the
sand-cranking machine would be "assimilation" of a new play schema.
Later, the toddler might decide to pour water or small stones through
the machine instead. She might decide to turn the machine upside down
and see what happened if the sand went in the other end. The results
of all these little "experiments" would allow the toddler to construct
a database of information about this type of sand toy; first, by
assimilating what she had seen the other child do, and second, by
conducting her own experiments to "accommodate" the results of new
information produced by her experiments with the sand-cranking machine
to her understanding of how things like this might work.
Imitation as an Experimental Method.
When a child with autism lacks the
ability or drive to imitate things in the world around him, he fails
to engage in critical self-initiated experiments that should allow him
to construct a world of meanings for the objects and activities he
sees. Imitation is a complex ability, and it is also a complex
disability. Difficulties with imitation can be thought of as a
convergence of at least two main areas of innate disability that may
affect children with autism. As we discussed earlier, much of what we
recognize as formal symptoms of autistic spectrum disorders can be
seen as the result of multiple and converging innate disabilities that
coexist in a way that makes for a characteristic pattern of disability
as well as possible adaptations. This coming together of innate
deficits was referred to earlier as the "matrix of abilities and
disabilities" through which the child's difficulties as well as
strengths form self-accommodations to what he cannot process in the
usual ways. We will now examine possible components of a failure to
imitate, with the goal of developing a better understanding of which
underlying innate deficits may need to be addressed for a particular
child when lack of imitation is identified as a learning deficit.
Imitation and the Desire to Be like Others.
The first component of an innate disability that contributes to
problems in imitation is the lack of an affiliative orientation. A big
part of imitating is wanting to be like, and do like others.
Typically, we do not teach
our children to imitate; it is just something they begin to do
spontaneously. When a child lacks the expected amount of drive to be
like others, to be where others are, or to do what others are doing,
the drive that underlies learning through imitation is gone or
diminished. A child who is shy may seem to lack a desire to join with
others, but this can be distinguished from autism because, in the
child with autism, the lack of desire to join in is pervasive and
present across many situations, but in the shy child it is usually
most notable with groups of peers, in busy situations, or around
relative strangers.
Imitation and a Theory of Another's Mind.
The second innate ability that underlies imitation is the capacity for
a theory of mind. When a child copies the actions of another, he
implicitly reflects the understanding that there is something salient,
something to be understood, a positive experience to be gained by
doing what another is doing. Imitation is a way of "assimilating" what
is in the mind of another through experiencing the experience of
another. This explains the attraction to imitating peers: Peers have
minds of similar complexity and organization, so the child can most
readily "see" what it is that the peer is doing. (This may also
explain why some parents and teachers note that autistic children will
imitate a bad behavior more readily than a good behavior: Bad
behaviors tend to be mentally simpler behaviors to execute. A bad
behavior, like biting or hitting, is often a means to an end, which
does not require theory of mind, just simple cause and effect, to
understand.)
Imitation and Novelty Seeking.
A third innate ability that drives imitation is response to novelty.
As we discussed, children with autism often have the opposite response
to novelty from other children. They tend to run from novelty rather
than seek it. The typical toddler is most likely to want to imitate
something rather novel and salient, something that really catches his
attention. Therefore, Barney is more interesting to copy than Peter
Jennings. The child with autism, however, does not attend to novel
things as readily, and so, in avoiding novelty, misses the salience
that novelty brings -- the Barney traits (purple-ness, bulbous-ness,
gawkiness) that might otherwise seem captivating. This is not to say
that children with autism don't like Barney -- many do. However, it is
more likely that Barney's familiarity and the repetitiveness of what
he does, not his novelty, makes him attractive.
In many ways, the absence of
imitation, or a low or limited level of imitation, is probably one of
the biggest learning handicaps of a developing child with autism.
There is so much he should be taking in via observation of others.
Lack of observation of others has a pervasive effect on the amount of
information the child takes in. This failure to "assimilate" new
information, in turn, profoundly affects the child's ability to
"accommodate," or to develop further information by relating new
experiences to existing schema.
How Children Learn Imitation.
Let's go through an example that demonstrates learning through
imitation in a typically developing child that may provide a model for
the way children with autism also can be taught to imitate: The
14-month-old gets a present. It is a stuffed cow. The father waves it
around, saying, "Cow! Cow! Moo! Moo!" He tickles the baby with it. The
baby is interested, thinks this is very cool, grabs for the cow, waves
it, and says, "Ca-Ca! M-o-o-o-!" several times. He gets a lot of
parental attention for having done so well at this little lesson.
Later, the 14-month-old's five-year-old sister is playing with her
farmyard set, and the 14-month-old toddles through her neatly arranged
corral, grabs a plastic cow, and shows Dad, saying, "Ca-Ca! M-o-o-o!"
A behaviorist would say that the 14-month-old has "generalized" what a
cow is. We could also say that the 14-month-old "assimilated" his
dad's cow use, and then accommodated his newly acquired cow schema to
include plastic cows as well as stuffed cows.
Imitation and the Behavioral Concept of "Generalization."
Understanding how and why a 14-month-old imitates is critical because
we often hear behaviorally oriented teachers commenting on how
something the autistic child has learned hasn't "generalized" yet.
What is meant is that the child has learned to respond to one example
of a learning target, but has not shown the predilection to use that
information elsewhere. For example, a child might learn to "touch cow"
using a six-inch, hard rubber cow, but will not yet "touch cow" if a
larger, soft-flocked cow is used. Why not? How is the process of
learning different for the child with autism? He has not learned
through imitation. Usually, the procedure is to "motor prompt" the
child with autism, taking his hand and putting it on the cow (rather
than the pig) when he is asked to "touch cow." The prompt is used less
and less until the child can discriminate between a cow and a pig on
his own. When he does this correctly, he gets half a pretzel stick or
some other treat he likes.
There are several key differences in
the learning process so far for the 14-month-old and for the child
with autism. First, the autistic child's actions are motivated by
cause and effect, not a desire to imitate (that is, to do like, or be
like someone else). He has figured out what to do to get the pretzel
stick. (He did not use theory of mind -- "I will have fun if I do this
with this cow, too!" but rather simple cause and effect.) He did not
begin the activity spontaneously, but his behavior was systematically
"shaped" to "touch cow" starting from the level at which he was
physically shown to do it. (He did not seek novelty.) The child with
autism likely engaged in this activity with no social reference to the
teacher before or after identifying the cow. (There was no affiliative
orientation motivating a desire to do as the teacher had done.) There
was no "generalization" because critical components of the learning
experience -- the novelty seeking as part of the learning experience,
and motivation to engage in this activity because someone else
interesting did it first -- were lacking.
What does this mean? Is motor
prompting not a good way to teach children with autism? No, it doesn't
mean it's not a good way of teaching. It can help the child attend to
something he might otherwise avoid attending to. Giving a food reward
sustains and organizes attention around a goal (the food), which is
important for the child when social attention alone is not that
relevant. It does work to teach specific examples, and sometimes in
the process, the child becomes interested enough in the materials or
in the way the teacher is teaching to retain this information in a
qualitatively different way that promotes assimilation and
accommodation. In this case, teaching must include materials that are
intrinsically interesting to the child to increase the probability
that the materials themselves will stimulate the desire to learn more,
just as they do in a typically developing child.
This slightly different understanding
of imitation should help one understand how to construct teaching
situations. If the child is
interested in some qualities of the teaching materials, there is a
chance that the child will
become increasingly interested in the teaching interaction. By
providing opportunities for imitative learning for children with
autism in a way that stimulates the same innate functions that govern
more typical patterns of learning through imitation, there is a better
chance that acquired information will be retained, used, and added to,
as it is with a typically developing child. The point is that an
aspect of typical development, like imitation, can be deconstructed
into its innate components -- affiliative drive, theory of mind, and
novelty seeking -- to describe how, why, and when imitation promotes
learning. In the case of autism, the first step in remediation of the
failure to imitate is to deconstruct it into these same innate
components -- affiliative drive theory of mind, and novelty seeking.
Weakness in any of those areas, or often in all three, will limit
imitative learning. Any of these possible innate weaknesses must be
addressed to improve capacity for imitative learning. By bolstering
the underlying deficits (such as by using intrinsically interesting
materials so the novelty of the materials benefits rather than
inhibits learning) we model typical development of imitative learning
and thereby give momentum to the generative, motivating qualities of
learning through imitation. Said more simply, the child with autism
may start to imitate after he has been stepped through imitation of an
activity, and it has turned out to be fun.
So, imitation can be increased by
manipulating the novelty of the teaching materials: A child with
autism may be happy to imitate "waving" using a twirling
battery-operated pom-pom with flashing lights, but may remain
uninterested in waving a baton. Similarly, imitation can be increased
by tweaking the "affiliative-drive" component of imitation, such as
when a peer provides a model of an activity that is developmentally at
the child with autism's own level, and so is more readily experienced
as interesting.
Reprinted from the book
Helping Children with Autism Learn: A
Guide to Treatment Approaches for Parents and Professionals
by Bryna Siegel, Ph.D.; Copyright © 2003 Oxford University Press,
Inc.; (June 2003; $30.00US; 0-19-513811-2) Permission granted
by Oxford University Press; For more information please visit the
publisher's website at
www.oup.com
Author
Dr. Bryna Siegel is
Professor of Psychiatry at the University of California, San Francisco
and Director of its Autism Clinic. As a developmental psychologist
specializing in developmental disabilities, she has worked with
families of children with autism for the past 25 years. She has
closely studied early diagnosis for autism, diagnostic methods, and
the effect of autism on the family. Her books include
The World of the Autistic Child:
Understanding and Treating Autistic Spectrum Disorders (OUP,
1996) and What About Me?: Siblings
of Developmentally Disabled Children. She lectures
frequently to parents and professionals, comparing and contrasting
treatments for autism and focusing on how to design and tailor
treatment programs for the individual child.
For More Information Contact:
www.writtenvoices.com
Reprinted with Permission
Some
are the melody, some are the rhythm, some are the harmony