Asperger’s and High-Functioning Autism: Overcoming Social Skills Deficits
"How can I help my child to generalize from one social situation to another? In other words, how can he learn 'social themes' on his own? I would like for him to realize that any particular interaction is nearly identical to some others." Children with Asperger’s (AS) and High-Functioning Autism (HFA) are hard to train in typical social behaviors, but they spontaneously learn things that neurotypical (non-autistic) children may consider difficult (e.g., memorizing license plate numbers of parked cars or home addresses in the neighborhood). The learning styles of AS/HFA children and neurotypical children are better suited to learn different tasks. AS and HFA children’s difficulty of learning social behavior is similar to neurotypical children’s difficulty of memorizing random factual details (e.g., phone numbers). Both arise from a mismatch between learning style and task. Intensive long-term training would surely make neurotypical kids remember a phonebook be