Teaching Students on the Autism Spectrum Using Visual Imagery
"What would be the most important teaching strategy to use with my students who are on the high functioning end of the autism spectrum?" The short answer is: capitalize on the child's natural visual-thinking skills... Children with Aspergers (AS) and High-Functioning Autism (HFA) often think differently than other children. They often have what is known as 'visual thinking'. While many of us think in words or abstractly, kids on the autism spectrum think in pictures and films playing in their head. They have a difficult time seeing a generic representation of, say, a cat, and instead recall exact images of cats they have seen. Some researchers believe that the way AS and HFA people think is a good way of compensating for losses in 'language thinking'. This is what often makes these kids good at building things and seeing the end product of something before it is done. Using this visual thinking to an advantage can help parents and teac