Picture Schedules for Autism

                

 

Children and adults with autism are known to have difficulty understanding spoken language. Images, and sometimes text, convey meaning for people who are unable to process spoken language. Research has found that children who use picture schedules are more engaged and less likely to exhibit challenging behaviors. Picture schedules are images and/or text arranged in a sequence that describe upcoming events or activities. Individualized schedules may act as a form of antecedent intervention to reduce challenging behaviors as they may limit the impact of new settings, demands, or activities.

In an article published in the Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders in June, 2005, a student with severe autism was exposed to an activity schedule that had been carefully prepared based on functional analysis. This analysis examined contexts in which self-injury did and did not occur. These contexts included attention, demand, play, and alone. The authors found that the student exhibited the most self-injurious behaviors during academic demand contexts and not during the no interaction or play contexts. The authors also found that if a demand session was followed by an attention session, self-injurious behavior seemed to carry over.

A schedule that consisted of a sequence of demand-no interaction-play-demand was compared to a no schedule condition. Results of the comparison of the no schedule/schedule condition found that there was significantly less self-injury during the Schedule condition. In addition, levels of engagement were relatively high during the Schedule condition.

O'Reilly, M., Sigafoos, J., Lancioni, G., Edrisinha, C., and Andrews, A. (2005). Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders, Vol. 35, No. 3.

Our website www.languageimages.com features picture schedules and communication boards for children and adults. We have generic picture schedules that you may find appropriate or you may customize your schedule or board with our database of over 5000 images. The site is easy to use and completed boards or schedules may be downloaded or we will print them for you.

Julia Lynch is a speech language pathologist with a special interest in autism, visual supports for communication, augmentative communication, and assistive technology.

Her website, http://www.languageimages.com features race and culture neutral images appropriate for children and adults.