Teaching Perspective-taking Skills to Children with Autism Spectrum Disorders

Book excerpt: Educators, psychologists, speech and language pathologists, school adjustment counselors, and parents can use the teaching guidelines in this manual to help children on the autism spectrum acquire the social perspective taking skills that are so vital to social competency. Beginning with basic nonverbal communication skills such as eye contact and pointing skills, and using concrete, step-by-step instructions, the manual provides systematic teaching programs designed to build progressively more complex social perspective-taking skills, including joint attention and pretend play skills. Identifying and predicting emotions in themselves and others, making social inferences, understanding false and nested belief, and avoiding faux pas are some of the featured skills. Teaching scenarios, with corresponding illustrations designed to enhance comprehension, are provided as well as recommended activities for promoting the generalization of acquired skills. This book includes reproducible materials on CD-ROM.