Persons with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) exhibit symptoms in 3 primary areas:
- Social communication/ social interaction
- Social reciprocity
- Verbal communication
- Nonverbal communication (body language, eye contact and empathy)
- Development, maintenance and understanding relationships
- Restricting, repetitive patterns of behavior, interests, or activities
- Developing functional academic/life skills
Some children with ASD also present with challenging behaviors and/or lagging skills in the areas of academics, leisure, vocational and independent living.
Pace addresses concern in the social communication and social interaction realm in a number of ways:
- Frequent skill assessments using evidence based tools such as the VB-MAPP
- Frequent motivation assessments to determine motivating items/activities/persons
- Social skills lessons at the child’s level
- Specialized classrooms trained in the use of applied behavior analysis (ABA) and verbal behavior (VB)
- Consistent data collection and data analysis to determine effectiveness of programming
Pace addresses concern in the restricting and repetitive patterns of behavior, interests, and activities in a number of ways:
- Working to find meaningful and functional replacement behaviors for repetitive behaviors
- Expanding developmentally appropriate leisure skills
- Increasing skills in the area of manding (requesting).
Pace addresses concerns regarding challenging behavior by:
- Utilizing functional behavior assessments (FBA) to determine what is maintaining the challenging behavior
- Addressing the challenging behavior by changing what happens before the behavior, teaching an alternative behavior and insuring the challenging behavior does not contact reinforcement.
- Consistent data collection and data analysis to determine effectiveness of programming
- Collaboration with mental health or social services as needed for comprehensive care
Pace addresses concerns regarding lagging academics, leisure, vocational and independent living by:
- Providing instruction through a functional academic curriculum
- Providing simulated and real life functional and work experiences within the community and/or work place (e.g., shopping, utilizing transportation, completing job tasks)
- Exposure to leisure activities within school and the community
- Identifying and teaching strategies necessary for independent functioning (e.g., using a schedule, following routines)