A GENERAL OVERVIEW OF EVIDENCE-BASED PRACTICES FOR AUTISM SPECTRUM DISORDER

Abstract

Various practices are applied to make the education of children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) qualified. These practices should be evidence based to be effective for the children with ASD and their families. In this study, evidence based practices applied in the education of the children with ASD and their families are explained within the frame of the literature. The most effective practices are applied in terms of the applied practices and practitioners’ competence in the evidence based practices, and the laws and policies lay emphasis for utilizing these practices. When examining the practices evidence based applied for the children with ASD, most of them are seen to be based on Applied Behavior Analysis (ABA) approach. ABA approach focuses on the skills needed by the children with ASD, when they are compared to their normally growing peers, and lays emphasis on the structured and individualized teaching. The most important behavior principles of the approach are negative reinforcement, punishment, result and formalizing. ABA methods decrease the negative methods; increases the communication, learning level and positive behavior. However, ABA also has some limitations, as every practice does. Mostly emphasized among these is that ABA based practices are applied mostly in clinical environments or classrooms. The existing interventions regarding ASD vary the practices and bring the discrete trial teaching approach, the relational approach, the unified approach and the developmental responsive approach into light. In the discrete trial teaching approach, new communication styles are taught effectively. This approach is based on that the behavior is learned by the individual, if the adult responds to the target behavior appropriately and consistently. In the relational approach, the skill wanted to be acquired in the interaction environment created within game context that develops social interaction is taught by disintegrating into steps. This approach is based on the assumption that the child should be directed to utilize an advanced and a higher level communicative behaviors. In the unified approach, the components of the discrete trial teaching approach and the relational approach have been combined. It utilizes the components of these approaches all together. In the developmental responsive approach, there is an intervention group named interaction based education and developmental, individual differences relationship based model. The most important priority of the approaches including these models is the positive emotional relations arising between the specialist and the child. It is based on the assumption that the positive emotional relation between the specialist and the child increases the child’s motivation for social communication and eases following the clues regarding social interaction. In the interventions executed with the children with ASD, families are seen as partners and it is seen that the relation based approaches are utilized in supporting child’s development and family-child interaction. The relation based approach depends on the parental modelling and asserts that families and other caretakers have a fundamental psycho-social effect in the development of all children.

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