By Monique Simpson | Speech Pathologist and Autism Specialist
As featured in Issue 01 of Autism World Magazine
A child with autism may have an unflinching ability to be able to maintain attention on a task that is motivating to them, like chatting about fire engines, repetitively turning taps on or off or perhaps lining up their favourite Thomas the Tank engines. However when asked to attend to an activity that doesn’t ‘tickle their fancy’, like labelling or matching some picture cards or building something with blocks, their attention may be very fleeting.
A study carried out by Garretson, Fein and Waterhouse in 1990 suggested that;
“autistic children’s difficulties in sustaining attention on imposed tasks may be attributable partly to a developmental delay and partly to the motivational contingencies of a task rather than to a primary impairment in the ability to sustain attention”.
I couldn’t agree more! Working with a child’s motivations and respecting and building upon their ideas are valuable tips to remember when improving attention span.
From my clinical experience here are three other critical points you should consider when working on increasing attention span: Read more …
