I would like to take a minute to introduce our presenter, Colin Guare.
Colin is a behavior analyst.
He's a writer speaker, um, and he's co-author, as many of you may know, with Peg Dawson and Richard Guare of the Smart but Scattered Book series on executive skills.
Um, he's also a contributor to other publications on the subject of executive skills and ASD as well.
Collins worked for 15 years with children from the ages of two to 21 in both public and private schools, in early intervention centers and homes.
Um, and he has a special interest in language development and staff training.
Colin consults for public and private schools, and most recently served two years as the inaugural director of behavioral services for Newport Public Schools in Newport, Rhode Island.
Um, Colin also develops new employment coaching methods that use the same executive skills principles in conjunction with motivational interviewing ABA and trauma-informed care to help employment coaches better support their customers.
And he lives in Rhode Island with his daughter Sydney.
So we are thrilled that Colin's joining us today.
I will just get outta the way and let him, uh, take over the show here.
Thanks Colin, so much for joining us.
All right.
Um, hi everyone and thank you Shelly and also too, um, Amanda and Sair for doing the interpreting for us today.
And thank all of you for, uh, joining me for this.
Um, off the top, yes, Tracy, I will send the slides out to Shelly afterwards and with some annotations about that stuff and any other resources that I mentioned, um, where they can be found.
Um, so let me share here.
Um, as Shelly said, uh, my name is Colin Guare and I'm a BCBA and, uh, all the good stuff that that entails.
This is the first time in a while that I've had to write a bio, and when I hear the 15 years read back to me, I kind of lost my breath for a second.
Uh, it's gone by fast.
Um, so, uh, I, I became a behavioural analyst and, and I've worked for, um, many different types of agencies, early intervention clinics, um, serving, um, the ASD population from the age of two to five, uh, public schools all the way from pre-K to high school, and as well as some outplacement centers, day centers that, um, serve kids who have, um, you know, are, uh, uh, aggressive or exhibits self injurious behavior.
And so my experience in that stuff has kind of run the gamut.
Um, as I said, as Shelly said, uh, my dad and, and Dr.
Dawson and I have also written the books a about the executive skills, and I've been participating in that with them for some time.
Uh, and I was diagnosed with ADHD, uh, the age of, I want to say six.
So as someone who, uh, dealt with the, with the, um, challenges that surround that, uh, throughout my schooling years, and for those who may not be familiar, um, ADHD is sort of the, the poster condition for executive skill challenges.
Um, and then having someone like my dad who was, uh, a psychologist researching and studying and, and treating and, and reading and writing about, um, executive skills.
It was something that I sort of grew up in and then came to the ABA stuff later.
Um, and then came back to executive skills with a more behavior analytic perspective.
So I hope that explains why, um, a behavioral analyst would sit in front of you guys today talking about executive skills, which is traditionally more of like a psychological or neurological, uh, category.
But, um, I think it has broader implications and, um, I'm hoping to talk today for less than an hour, would be my hope.
Um, typically when I do presentations, it's a smaller group and a little bit more interactive, and it's really hard for me to get away from that.
So I'm gonna throw some stuff out there for you guys, and hopefully we can leave, uh, a good chunk of time at the end for people to digest a little bit of the intervention suggestions, maybe throw out some examples of things that they see or might have questions about, or even if you just want to talk through more specifically a case.
I find more often than not that these things are easier talked out through an example, and I would rather use some one of your examples, um, that might ring truer to everyone else in the session, uh, rather than just create one of my own that might not be as applicable.
So, um, as I said, uh, there, I just wanted to start with this because it's, there are some really exciting things, a lot of exciting things going on in the sort of neurological biological world with autism right now.
I'm not sure how many people had had seen this study, but it was just recently done in which, um, a company and a university used hair samples, um, and then tracked a large group of kids over years and years and, uh, used some, uh, algorithm learning and, uh, some testing and, and, uh, different kinds of testing.
And, uh, were able to get really good results for using those hair samples to predict that one month of age, which of their, the kids in the cohort would, um, later on be diagnosed with ASD.
So there is some really, really, really good stuff.
Um, there's a lot of progress and so much that it's, it's kind of hard to keep up with all of it, but that was really exciting to read.
And I just wanna share that off the top.
In terms of executive skills, I thought I would start the, this presentation since it's been a little while, even for me to look at where is the, where are we at right now with the sort of neuroscience of executive skills and ASD, um, cause I think in approaching this, it's something that to a certain extent we think, well, we see kids with these executive skills challenges in, in schools, um, and executive skills is something that has a lot of, like a neurological or, or neuroscience foundation.
Shouldn't there be some connection? Um, so I went through a bunch of the, the neuroscience studies and looking for, you know, what MRI studies have they done to see is there a clear or are there trends, um, in, in the ASD community for, um, executive skills.
Um, so first study, okay, concrete conclusions are difficult.
Let's see, another one.
All right.
No significant group differences were observed in youth with and without autism.
When treating ASD and typically developing groups, categorically significant group differences were not observed.
Okay? Um, the neuro correlates remain to be clarified.
Um, we even see a lack of agreement about the EF construct in those with, uh, ASD no group differences, but greater individual variability.
So as far as the neuroscience of ASD and executive skills goes, we have disagreement among conceptual models, limited consensus on even what constitutes executive skills.
When we're looking at it from a neurological perspective, the data that we're getting back is not conclusive that there are any group-wide differences, and maybe we're seeing some higher variability between skills at an individual level, um, splinter skills, so to speak.
So given all of that, I step back and we think I sort of asked the question, you know, is it really worth it to even consider these, the two things together, executive skills and ASD, um, because traditionally executive skills is considered as something that is pretty well grounded in a lot of the neuroscience.
You think executive skills, you think frontal lobe.
Um, and so we would expect to see patterns in the neuroscience because we see patterns in the behavior, and it really doesn't turn out to be the case.
However, is this even worth it? Um, I think most people can't anticipate my answer, which is gonna be yes.
Um, sure there is some inconclusive neurological data out there that basically we, we aren't able to say neurologically as two different groups.
Can we say that there's a difference in the executive skills of typically developing, uh, kids and kids, uh, with ASD not really, but a, we as practitioners and then using rating skills, um, are reporting and seeing and observing and hearing from others that the classes of behavior that, that executive skills are concerned with.
We do see patterns, at least in individuals, if not in groups for this kind of stuff.
Um, executive skills are socially significant categories of behavior or behavior patterns.
And so even though we want to try to stand on top of this neurological bed work bedrock, and then we find out that it's not really there like we thought it might be, I say that executive skills, executive skills as a concept and as an organizational tool for us as practitioners still has inherent value.
So I wanted to put that out there.
Um, because the long thread of executive skills traditionally tends to stand on a lot of this neuroscientific data about frontal lobes, about neural pathways, about areas of the brain and how that affects us.
And I wanna be clear that when the people who are experts at that are dug into differences between ASD and non ASD population, they didn't find a lot of broad differences.
And so you have to ask the question, well, is it worth it to think about these two things as being really linked together? And I think it still is because of the practical benefits of talking about executive skills as classes of behavior that are important to us throughout our lives and can be particularly impacted in individuals with ASD.
So what are, uh, executive skills and functions? Um, I'm sure we've all heard of executive skills slash executive functioning by now.
Um, but we'll try to get down to brass tacks about what we're really talking about here today.
So, uh, self-direction, a actions needed to choose goals and create and perform and sustained actions toward goals.
Um, self-regulation to attain goals.
This is all adapted from Russ Barkley, who is, uh, kind of one of the pioneers of modern thought about executive skills and a person whom we base a lot of our work on top of.
Um, so all that is to say that one analogy I often use is the, the executive skills are sort of like the air traffic control system.
You know, we have the rest of the stuff in our brain, our, our memories, uh, all the things that we learned, the things that we experienced, all the information that we've gathered and that we've categorized and, and executive skills are the part that's kind of about how are we making use of that, you know, how do we translate that into the real world? And then when we take in information, how do we process that in a way that is going to help us again in the future? Uh, there are many models of, of executive skills.
Um, this is just a list that I, I ripped from Wikipedia.
So even on there we're talking about 10 different models of executive skills.
Uh, the blue one there that's highlighted is the self-regulatory model.
That would be the Russell Barkley model, and that would be the closest to the model that we tend to follow.
Um, but again, going back to those neuroscience studies, they did a good job of pointing out that even amongst, um, people who, uh, study these things and produce models and produce ideas about how, how this works, there is competition and disagreement about what the essential factors are overall.
There is generally across these models, there is components of inhibition, memory or information processing, um, flexibility in terms of cognitive flexibility, and then a component may be of planning, problem solving, prioritization.
Um, and so most of the models are, are gonna include, if not all four of those strong elements of at least a few of them.
Uh, as I said, predominantly and historically, uh, executive skills are associated with frontal lobes.
Um, and nowadays, along with a lot of the other ideas about what's happening in the brain, we're taking a more of a look at, um, circuits, pathways, um, kind of not just the area, but how a specific kind of information might travel from one place to another and be recruited by several different areas.
Uh, but the frontal lobe all still does play a, a predominant role in executive functioning.
Uh, as far as what the, the executive skills are, um, I, I put our in quotes because this is a list that you would find in, in our books in the smart but scattered series.
Um, there, as I said, there are different lists out there.
Um, I think a lot of them are gonna include familiar language and no matter which one you choose to follow, I think you can, you can get good outcomes.
Um, so our list is these 11.
So we have response inhibition.
Actually, you know what, I'll switch the slide to show just this, uh, approximate emergence.
So when do we see these things show up in life? Typically, um, response inhibition, working memory, and sustained attention along with emotional control are usually happening really young.
So when we say response inhibition or inhibitory, uh, behavior, that means the ability to resist the reaction.
So you'll see, um, a lot of that kind of automatic behavior in babies where the, you put your finger in their hand and they grab the hand or they reach for something and they'll reach for the thing every time kind of automatically.
And then around the age of six months is when babies typically start to exhibit the skill of not reaching for something or not grabbing something.
Um, and we would consider that to be the first evidence of an in inhibitory response, uh, working memory or sustained attention.
The way that we interpret that in like a small child or infant is like an object permanence test.
If anyone's ever seen those, I put the ball, I put a, uh, a ball down, and then I put a cup on top of the ball and the baby's looking at it, and then I sneak the ball away and I lift the cup up and there's nothing there.
And if the baby's surprised, that's that kind of emerging working memory and sustained attention, they were able to keep their focus on the cup and the ball, and they have some sense that the ball was there or should still be there and are surprised when it isn't.
Whereas a child younger than that will have no reaction because it's like outta sight, outta mind with the ball.
Um, emotional control is exactly what you might think of.
Um, are you able to kind of self-regulate your emotions, um, and keep them from interfering with your life in a way? Not that you have no emotion, but are you able to regulate your emotions such that they're not interfering with your goals in, in your daily life? Uh, task initiation is the procrastination skill, or the opposite of task initiation would be a procrastination skill.
Uh, planning prioritization.
Can you put things in order? Do you understand that something might need to be done first rather than third, or it might only work a certain way or work better for you a certain way? Organization, we think about organizing physical space, whereas time management, I think about organizing time.
Uh, flexibility is, can I adapt to change in the environment? How well do I adapt to changes in the environment? How well do you plan for, or how well are you able to overcome unforeseen, uh, barrier barriers in a goal that you're trying to achieve? That comes about, you know, eight or nine.
And then the ones that take that are, that are sort of emerging much later and are more, we would consider to be more complex skills are goal directed persistence and metacognition.
So when I think of goal-directed persistence, I think of like a really adult version of response inhibition and sustained attention.
Can I identify something that I want and resist the urge to deviate from that for a long stretch of time, weeks, months, years? Metacog metacognition can be a little tricky to pin down.
Um, but I would say the easiest way to think about metacognition is like a third person video game, or thinking about your own thinking, thinking about your own thought process, um, for anyone that's ever gone to therapy.
I was thinking about this earlier today cuz I was at therapy.
Uh, therapy is in large part trying to engage in a metacognitive process, thinking about how you think.
Um, so how do these map out onto the kind of rough four that I had said here? This would be how I'd kind of map those out.
So response inhibition and emotional control kind of fall in the inhibition sphere.
Sustained attention and task initiation might be a little bit of both.
Um, the idea here is that we have these kind of broad categories and there might be differences for people.
You, if you're looking at a, at some other version of executive skills, maybe they call it something other than time management, maybe they fold time management into planning or maybe they fold planning into organization.
Um, I think that the distinctions or those specific differences are less important than you have some system for categorizing this stuff and, and organizing it.
I think that's, it's almost more important.
It's less important that it accurately describes what's going on in a person, head, person's head, and more important that it's consistent for us to be able to describe classes of behavior.
So it makes it much easier for us to then talk about categorize and plan for how to help people address that behavior.
When we talked about variability, so, um, one of the neuroscience, uh, articles did talk about variability, so I wanted to spend a second and touch on that.
Um, this might be what we, I'm mapping out of what we'd say, like typically developing executive skills, we've got strong areas and strong skills, we've got, uh, weaker areas or challenge or slightly more challenging areas, and maybe these are our most challenge skills.
And these ones, it depends on does the task rely more on inhibition than memory? If it does, then we're, we're good at it, and if not, but you can see where everything's sort of shading in line with where the overall strength and weakness of this larger skill circle is.
And if we take away the words and it help us look at the picture a little bit more clearly, you can see that everything color-wise sort of shades in with one another.
Where that might contrast with someone who, uh, is on the autism spectrum, is what they're talking about.
Variability is, uh, more splintered skills.
We've all, I think many people, um, may have heard or are familiar with the term of splinter skills.
Uh, often we talk about it in a, the con context of autism because, um, a kid will have a skill that either is lagging way behind or is far beyond.
Um, and there are a lot of skills that we would view as very similar to that.
And the kid is either very good at, very bad at all of those other skills, but then has this one that is like way outta line with the other ones.
Uh, and I'll give an example of that.
So, but one of the things we can't expect maybe amongst kids with autism from the neuroscientific perspective is not so much they have autism, so we expect them to be inflexible or we expect them to, uh, have really good recall or we expect them to be poor at planning or problem solving.
More.
How we might consider the neuroscience in this context is we should expect higher variability among these skills, even if it seems like it's out of whack with the rest of the skills that are around it or might be similar to it.
So as an example, looking at this sustained attention, you know, that doesn't match up.
You know, I think the example would be like if a person says we, I, if I get them started on something, it's like they can go forever on it.
They're really focused, they'll just go and go and go, but they need a lot of prompting to get started.
A lot of poking and prodding, even if it's something that they like, they tend to take a lot of poking and prodding to get to get started.
And so from that perspective, we would say it's sort of a splintered skill in the sense that the sustained attention is really strong, the focus is very strong, even though the task initiation, the response inhibition, working memory are things that we would otherwise, um, categorize as challenges for this person.
So we should expect variability.
Okay.
Talking about interventions with executive skills, how does an executive skill, uh, challenge look different from something that we would just consider to be like an isolated skill challenge or something that might not point to any wider or more pervasive problem? Um, I think that the things that I tend to look for are that, uh, in executive skill challenge is gonna occur across contexts, places, et cetera.
In ABA terms, we would say that this skill deficit is, or these, this error is very well generalized.
It generalizes across environments and across conditions, and it's difficult to locate an environmental cause, you know, as opposed to maybe more of a non ES problem is something that just seems to depend on a specific environment or a specific context or a specific person, and seems to also pop up out of nowhere.
So, as you might expect, when we talk about an executive skill weakness, we're talking about something that seems to be broad, um, and goes across various environments and contexts.
And if I'm talking to, to the behaviorists in the room a little bit, how might we go about, about determining, you know, how broad or how narrow the skill deficit is? Again, it might be something that you do as part of the FBA process.
Um, do we see the same or different topographies, the behavior, does it look the same or different depending on the setting the adults, the peers, uh, the time of day and is the behavior seem to be serving the same or different functions depending on those variables? Uh, and that can help us get a handle on are we seeing the same thing and does it look the same or are, do we, do we sort of casually, um, hypothesize that the same thing was going on? But when you look at it more closely, you come to find out, okay, this is not necessarily a task initiation problem, it's a sustained attention problem here and a response inhibition problem over here, but we thought it was all the same.
Um, parametric analysis, so getting a better picture of reinforcement patterns and how these things are being responded to.
Um, and then component composite analysis, which we're gonna talk about, I'm gonna touch on a little bit later as well in more depth, but it helps us a component.
Composite analysis is something that can help us pinpoint the skilled deficit.
Um, it's based on precision teaching.
Uh, for people who, uh, are not familiar with precision teaching, I would check out Kent Johnson and Morningside Academy or the work of like, uh, Rick Kubina and I'll touch on those resources at the end.
But, uh, component composite analysis, I think could be a really useful tool in this circumstance in terms of breaking down the components of a skill to help you determine where the errors are exactly happening.
Okay.
Um, so inhibition interventions, uh, wait programs, tolerating programs, a lot of people do breathing or self-regulation programs.
Um, games, priming.
Uh, again, priming is running through a script with a kid prior to them being exposed to a, an environment or a stimulus that they previously have responded to with, uh, an impulsive response.
You know, so rehearsing the rules right before you engage in the thing.
Um, and then scripting for emotional control in the sense that, uh, same thing similar to priming, um, pulling this kid out of an environment, or we have a kid who has a, a hard time with emotional control in various circumstances, we can pull them out of that environment and work on different scripts, including varied scripts and hierarchical scripts, more complicated scripts, depending on the, um, uh, level of the learner that we're working with.
So memory or inter information interventions are also pretty straightforward.
Some of these I think are going to be maybe interventions that people are, are pretty well familiar with.
Um, maybe just not in the context of do they address executive skills.
So if these things sound familiar, that's, I'm great because now you can just use those techniques that you are already familiar with and you'll be addressing these things.
And if people have questions about, um, in more detail or versions of these, um, please bring them up at the end and we can talk more specifically about them.
But, um, memory or information interventions, depending on the age of the kid, the skill level of the kid, this might involve using just some multi-step directions.
1, 2, 3 step directions.
Um, relay or recall tasks or games or embedded opportunities.
So, um, shopping trips, um, field trips, class chores, things of that nature where I can feel like I'm building more information in for this kid to remember and setting that up, uh, more organically, I guess.
Now, um, planning or problem solving interventions.
So games I think are my favorite way to work on planning and prioritization and problem solving, um, strategy.
Um, so you can play a, a single player game, which if you're programming for that game to address a certain skill.
The nice thing about a single player game is it's easier to contain and you can kinda program it ahead of time.
Uh, the more difficult thing is single player games are limited in scope.
Um, they, if, if we repeat the same game over and over again, you tend up end up with like a rote pattern of behavior.
The kid figures out the one or two strategies that seem to work really well, and then the game after that, after that, the kid sort of solves the game.
We're not getting anything new out of it.
And maybe the most important is the lack of opportunity to kind of read and interact with other players.
Um, multiplayer games are harder to control variables, um, but wider in scope, longer lasting.
And then you also have the sort of side social benefits.
Um, I prefer games that have some strategy, um, because a game of pure chance is gonna have limited benefit in terms of the planning or prioritization, because a lot of that skill is built in the idea of I need to think ahead, not only about what I am going to do, but anticipate what other people are going to do.
Um, imaginary scenarios.
So we do this sort of thing even in the adults.
I, as, uh, Shelly said at the top, I spend a lot of my time now, um, training coaches who coach people who are looking for jobs.
Um, and a lot of the conversations and the way that we train them is to, we, I want the coach to ask questions so that the participant, the person who they're coaching will talk them through finding a job, going to an interview, solving some sort of problem that they have.
Um, the reason that we do that is not because I as the coach, think that this person doesn't know how to do that, but because we're engaging in the sort of rehearsal process, I want them to talk through this goal with me.
A because, uh, it helps them identify the specific actions that they're gonna do and sort of mentally rehearse them, and b, because it'll help them anticipate barriers and obstacles.
So I would do the same thing with a kid who maybe had a planning or prioritization issue, is to locate some of the circumstances in which that seemed to be a difficulty for them.
And depending on, um, their speech and language level or cognitive ability, have a conversation with them or in some way figure out how to, um, design an activity in which they could practice solving a problem or, um, planning around a barrier or prioritizing something.
Um, and then flexibility or metacognitive interventions.
A lot of this is going to be, if you're talking about flexibility, and especially if we're talking about metacognitive interventions, we're probably talking about older and, uh, kids with, uh, pretty good speech and language.
Um, not to say you can't, and we're gonna cover this in a second, not to say that you can't start to address that at a younger age or with somebody who's a little bit of a lower functioning level, but just, um, a metacognitive process is, is something that is a, uh, uh, sort of higher order thinking and b, hard to communicate without good language.
Um, one of the things that I, I like to look through when I think about flexibility or metacognitive interventions is this chart, which is from analyzing instructional content, um, a guide to instruction evaluation.
This is written by Philip Tiemann and Susan Markle, I think they're husband and wife.
I actually, I don't really know anything about Philip, but Susan Markle is awesome.
And she, uh, worked in Skinner's lab and was a very kind of early behavior analyst and then branched off and got into an area of research and writing called Programmed Instruction, which is a lot about just breaking down how the learning process occurs and how we can structure, um, lessons and activities to help kids reach the learning objectives that we're intending them to.
And this is a graph that I, I pulled from her book.
And so when I think about, um, the executive skills stuff, uh, this is the area where a lot of the flexibility and metacognitive things are.
So, again, not to say that versions of it can't be introduced at a at a younger age, but just, um, cognitively for both ASD and typically developing populations, you're not gonna get a lot of juice from the squeeze, um, so to speak, until kids are probably in their like teens if you're gonna focus on, um, more complex metacognitive processes.
Uh, the other thing I would recommend for things like flexibility or metacognitive interventions is peak.
Um, and some people may have already be familiar with peak, other people may be using, some of you guys may be using peak regularly.
And if you are, I would be really, uh, curious to hear about it from anybody who's used it in the past in the, in the chat and what their experiences with it has been and what they like it about it.
Um, but Peak is a, uh, behaviorally based, um, skill building, uh, program that specifically tries to target, um, the sort of language and, um, thinking skills that you would need to sort of tackle these more complex flexibility and metacognitive, uh, topics.
So when I, uh, talked about, um, how we would go about, um, problem solving, uh, a sort of an executive skill issue or determining what our goal is and then, uh, how we're gonna get there, uh, component composite analysis is a big part of, or has been a big part of it for me.
Um, component composite analysis is taken from precision teaching and preci precision teaching is, uh, a difficult to pronounce.
And b, a really cool thing that people do.
And it includes a whole world of ways of presenting, um, presenting information, teaching kids how to graph it, how to move into it and stuff.
For now, we're just gonna take this component composite analysis, which is something that they do a lot of and I think it's really useful.
So the idea is basically if I have a kid who's struggling with a, uh, skill, um, or I want to teach them a skill, so in this case I notice that this kid is having, um, they're not finishing their tests or quizzes every time we get to the end, they have 30 minutes to finish, it's, uh, 15 questions and we get to the end.
And they haven't even looked at questions 10 through 10 through 15.
Um, they're consistently finishing short.
And I wanna say, okay, I would really love for to come up with a way to help them self manage this test because it seems like they're having a challenge either with like sustained attention or, um, task initiation.
And so one of the things I need to do, break down this skill into the component parts.
So I want the end goal to be self-management of a time test, which would be, we call it like the composite skill.
The sub composite skill would, might be, okay, in order to do this, they need to know how to use a calculator, divide the time that they have by the number of problems, and they also know how to set and reset a timer.
And to do those things, they need to process the numbers, they need to scan through a visual field.
They might need, uh, a task analysis or we might need to train them on a sequence for dividing numbers.
Um, responding to a timer and matching the timer to a written number.
So those would just be examples of this is the end goal skill.
These are skills that you would need to get to this end goal, and these are component skills that you need to get to this middle goal here.
The reason that I, that I bring this up in the context of executive skills is because, um, I think that when you, I put this, I think when you start to see an executive skill show up is by breaking this down and starting to see that there are some of these sub-skills that are causing an issue.
Cause I think a lot of the times we look at something like this, the final product of the final sort of final product behavior, and it includes a lot of components, it's very complicated, you know, when you break it down, what kinds of things make up this managing a a time test.
And, um, it can be really difficult with like a broad skill or a complex skill like that to see really through it and say either this is a problem of sustained attention or this is a problem of task initiation or something like that.
And so I think breaking it down is helpful.
And then also it allows you to get down more into more detail about, well, if I think that the the person can do all of these things, then is it something that's happening at this level or I've tried them, I've tried everything to with this, and they keep erring on the process numbers.
So I'm finding that dividing skills into the component skills, or excuse me, dividing these composite skills into the sub composite and component skills is valuable because down here when we reduce them to more simple level tasks, you will see more common patterns across these complicated tasks that, um, speak to an executive skill issue.
I hope I can.
Uh, okay.
Yeah.
So, um, the other thing that we do a lot for the executive skill, executive skill challenges is not just improving the skill but teaching compensatory behaviors.
So if we wanted to improve, um, working memory, we can, uh, create, uh, a game or an activity.
A lot of the times I, for younger kids with working memory, um, I will ask them what they had for lunch.
You know, what did you have for lunch? And I asked them five minutes after we finished lunch, or if they're, and then they're a little bit better.
And so we ask 'em that afternoon, Hey, what'd you have for lunch today? Then we get better than that and I say, Hey, what did you have for lunch yesterday? And then we get better, we move on from that and um, I'll have their parents send me a quick email about what happened over the weekend and then start to ask them what happened over the weekend.
So improving that kind of working memory can be as simple as like a, a relay recall task or a, Hey, um, I'm busy with something right now.
Hey, hey buddy, can you go over there and grab me, um, a blue pen and a green sticky note and then just see if they come back.
So something like that, um, is a basic way to work on these skills.
If you are working on those and they're not taking, or we're seeing that a kid's executive skills seem to be improving except for this one, um, it might be time to consider, um, consent compensatory behaviors or some environmental modifications that help them help supplement their, their challenge skill.
Um, so we might initially use a timer.
We use timers all the time as an environmental modification for time management.
Um, and on the one hand we hope that kids and adults ourselves kind of internalize, um, this skill.
They develop a kind of your, your sort of body clock.
You know, we have a general sense of time, we have a general sense that time is important.
Um, we also do all of these, uh, little things like we build in little buffers for ourselves.
Um, is a thing that as you get older, you, you learn about doing.
You know, when I was in high school, um, and I needed to be somewhere, I would look up, you know, the directions and how long it took to get to that place that I had to be at the doctor's at 1:00 PM Um, and I would say, okay, it says it takes 23 minutes to get to the doctor and I have to be there at 1:00 PM so I'm gonna leave at 1237 cuz that's 23 minutes away from 1:00 PM And then you find out that doesn't always work that well cause you get stuck in traffic or you didn't realize that you have to get gas or your dog took one of your shoes and now you can't find it.
So we learn to build in and say, you know, I should probably plan to leave at about 1230.
It's only gonna take 23 minutes, but I'll start to get ready to go at 1230.
And we say that that's part of, um, time management, you know, but obviously as you can see, a lot of these inter uh, executive skills are interconnected or a lot of our activities are recruiting multiple skills at the same time.
And it also speaks to this idea of compensation.
So I give myself more time now before I have to leave the house.
Part of the reason I do that is because I'm not an organized person.
I can tell you right now, uh, I don't know where my car keys are, I don't know where my wallet is.
Uh, I think I know where, oh, my headphones are in my ears, so we're good.
Um, so I, my my poor organization, um, affects my ability to be on time, but I compensate for that by allowing myself extra time in order to find all of the things.
I could also try to be more organized.
And I've done that in the past, but so far it's been unsuccessful.
Um, so I use this time management technique to compensate for less than good organizational skills.
Um, another example would be, uh, I used to, uh, I used to listen to podcasts in the shower or listen to music in the shower.
Um, and especially if I listened to a good podcast, it resulted in me sort of taking like a 30 minute shower without really thinking about it.
Cuz I would just be standing in there and listening and get caught up.
And, and so I eventually started setting alarms on my phone for, uh, the shower so that the alarm would go off in the middle of the shower and it would cut off the podcasts.
That was the other nice thing is like, not the beeping of the alarm, but that it would stop the podcast from playing and then I would put the phone far enough away that I had to get out of the, get out of the, uh, shower in order to be able to grab it.
So again, some of this is about skill building and I'll, other parts of it are going to be about can I compensate for, um, a challenge skill in some other way by using an environmental modification or, uh, a piece of technology in order to help the kid address this.
So again, in this circumstance, on the one hand we hope, we hope that this, this person, this could kind of ha develops like a, a body clock to be like, oh, he just has a sense of time.
Um, but if we try that and, and we attack it from a couple different angles and it doesn't seem be working, at some point it's probably better to just be like, you know what, maybe we should just teach the skill of setting timers.
Um, one of the things that it's helpful for is the thing that we're trying to teach becomes much more discreet.
So rather than becoming better at time management, which is a tough thing to put at the top of that pyramid, if I put, uh, if I put become better at time management at the top here, it's a very great, it's a really nice goal, but it's gonna include, you know, hundreds of things at this level and then thousands and thousands of things at this level and how, you know, that's a lifelong process kind of at that point.
So even, even though we are working on executive skills, I'm always gonna be trying to organize them around a context and around an environment and then generalize from there.
Um, and again, in this case, we go from the goal for us and for him goes from becoming better at time management to when X happens.
I set a timer for myself for this.
Um, in terms of do's and don'ts or do's and proceed with caution, I'm not gonna tell anybody not to do anything, but I do have a couple of opinions that I'll share.
So I would say do slice thin, which is another, uh, uh, uh, phrase from precision teaching, um, because of the way that they do their charts and their graphs.
But what it essentially means is, what I wanna do is incremental quick changes are preferred over a big change.
Um, and that's something obviously that's a common, uh, thread in in behavior analysis and, and other types of teaching already, but, um, sliced thin.
So increasing step by step and you can go from step to step relatively quickly if the kids seem to be mastering the steps, but I want to keep just ahead of where they're at instead of setting a goal that seems far away from what they can achieve.
Um, I would definitely encourage people to be taking some sort of data about how this is going, even if it's fairly rudimentary, but, um, collecting some sort of data, um, that you can, you can make a use to make a decision about, uh, how well this intervention is going.
Um, I would encourage people to think about generalization versus the acquisition and then the tradeoff between those two.
So we know that, um, I want to work on response inhibition.
This kid is very impulsive, you know, um, that impulsivity, those impulsive behaviors though they always also occur in a context, you know, they occur around peers or, um, you know, I, I don't grab something or I don't, uh, scream or yell when there's, uh, nobody else in the room.
But when I see another kid playing with the toy, that's kind of what set it off, sets it off.
So, um, the point being is that, uh, teaching a kid to acquire a skill or practic practicing a skill is always gonna be easier if we to some extent isolate the environment and get rid of a lot of that noise because it's gonna help us focus better on presenting this component and helping them to kind of practice and learn this skill, but also remembering that the farther we are away from that natural environment, the longer it's gonna take us to get back there from this very sterile version that we're presenting now.
Um, so you can do both, you can do either, and you can get there either way, but just keeping in mind, um, if I'm going to practice, um, some sort of response inefficient training with a kid, for example, is it worth it to do it right in the moment in the environment? Do I wanna maybe pull them and practice some of it outside of this environment? And what are the trade-offs with that? Um, I do wanna say something about, uh, visual schedules and, and materials like that.
Um, I know that visual schedules are a very popular thing, or at least they are here where we work, and they're very widely used.
Um, and often they're pitched as ways to help kids with autism.
Um, you know, self govern, self-regulate.
It's a way for them to kind of improve or a, um, a piece of technology that helps support their executive skills.
The one thing I'll say about the, the visual schedules is that the item itself is arbitrary and it's, it's its use that gives, its, its meaning and its wait would be like the, I guess the layman's way of putting it is this, um, you know, this schedule, this schedule, um, just sticking it on the wall isn't gonna do much or just having this up on the board isn't necessarily gonna do much.
Um, it's how it's interacted with, it's how it's referred to.
It's how the kid, whether or not the kid has any control over it.
Um, is this a, you know, down here, is this a task analysis? Are we, um, using this as a way to teach a sequence that should be memorized later? Is are these things going to change on a day-to-day basis? Does the kid have any say in how these things change on a day-to-day basis? Um, and does the use of this schedule a do we have a goal? Do we have a behavioral goal or an executive skills goal that we're trying to get to that involves the use of this schedule and then carefully considering how it's actually being used and is how it's actually being used getting us closer to that goal.
Um, I mentioned here, um, knowing what's coming or there's different rationales for, you know, I, we, we use the schedule because then they know what's coming and it's supposed to make kids feel, I think, more comfortable or whatever.
Um, and it reminds me, I went a long time ago to a present presentation by Brian Iwata who's, uh, uh, as big an ABA figure as there is, and he had a particular, uh, saying about that, about that idea of like, schedules, the idea that schedules are good because they make people aware of the future and that makes kids more comfortable.
And he said, um, when I was sitting in the dentist chair and then I heard the drill, I knew it was coming, but it didn't make me feel better about things.
And so I do wanna push back, I guess on the phenomenon that this, like this forewarning idea is necessarily in inherent to a schedule and also that a schedule is really, uh, or any piece of technology is as good as the programming that's being done around it.
You know, I think I would feel in a bet that a good many of you have know that well from, um, speech generating devices and AAC alternative and augmentative communication, you know, we, we can get all the different texts that we want, we can get all different apps that we want.
We can have binders and binders and binders of icons, and at the end of the day, it works as well as, um, as well as the kid can use to interact with the environment.
Meaning to say that if you have good trained staff who know how to implement protocols for it and train kids on how to use it, then it'll work great.
But the binder doesn't do anything on its own.
Same thing for visual schedules and stuff like that, is that the context of it and the teaching of it and the use of it is as important, more important than its presentation or how it looks and it doesn't really do much work on its own would be my argument.
Um, okay, so given that, I'm sorry, I know we covered a lot there.
Um, but I'm gonna throw this up here and just say that when it comes to teaching, uh, executive skills to kids with autism, we're going to teach at a, at a skill level, you know, in a, we're gonna start at least on an, on an individual skill level or in an individual circumstance level, and then promote to generalization later on as we see fit.
Um, and then if there are certain areas that lag behind others, we can consider a supplementary modifications and technological supports.
Uh, I think that a fair amount of the interventions that we've talked about based on my conversations with Shelly and looking through some of the other information on the website is that, um, a lot of you guys are already fluent at implementing interventions like wait programs, um, tolerating programs, games, um, you know, imaginary scenarios or multi-step directions, multi-step directions is a really common thing to program for.
Um, and if that's the case, then you're already programming for targeting executive skills.
So I don't wanna, um, I guess I don't wanna spend too much of people's time talking about things that they're already, or techniques that they're already familiar with, but, uh, I would love to hear any questions or comments that people have about executive skills and in particular, um, how we might apply executive skills thinking or what it means to apply executive skills thinking to an a SD population.
Great, Colin, thank you so much for that.
So I'm sure there are some questions.
Um, if folks would like to use the raise hand feature, then I can, uh, activate your microphone if you'd like or if you'd like to check type your questions in the chat or Q and A, you're more than welcome to do that as well.
And just as folks are formulating their questions, I will let you know that I had put the um, BACB continuing education verification code number one in the chat a little bit ago.
So if you missed that, you can scroll back and find that there.
And I'm putting the second one in as we speak as well.
Um, any questions And if people have questions like specifically about, I guess, like I said, case, case specific questions, you know, I have this situation where blank, blank, blank, I'd be happy to take those.
Um, hey, what is a wait program? Um, I will throw out this question just as folks are thinking about that and, and it relates to your, what is a wait program, I guess.
But I think one of the, the challenges that I often, uh, am faced with or hear about is, um, is that impulsivity.
How is it that we help, you know, some of these little people and not so little people.
So maybe if you're, you know, supporting a, a middle school or junior high or high school learner, um, where, you know, they're just having such difficulty, um, kind of managing the, that inhibition, how, how, what is your best strategy? What is your best program to support a learner who's really having challenges around, um, you know, kind of keeping their cool under those situations? Yeah, it is a, a good question and I think also highlights the, the challenge of a presentation like this is, we're talking about all ages.
We're talking about a lot of different backgrounds and um, and what level we're talking about.
So when we talk about like wait programs or tolerating programs in a clinical setting for younger kids, um, we're talking about, um, waiting for seconds, you know, or you know, can you sit at this table? I'm gonna, I'm, we're gonna sit at the table cuz we were literally this, we're gonna sit at the table and I'm gonna put the iPad on the table and, and we're gonna see, we're gonna start at three seconds because I baselined we've baselined this before and you baselined out that it, it, within two seconds you would grab the iPad even if receiving an instruction not to.
So maybe I, I made an error there.
Maybe we should really be focusing on like one second and then stretching it out from, from there.
The other thing that I think for like a, an older kid would be more priming techniques.
Um, it doesn't directly I think talk about executive functioning, but there's another program written by the same person who did this, uh, peak thing, Mark Dixon.
Uh, it, I will find it for you, but it's a curriculum called Accept Identify Move, um, which is a entire curriculum for elementary, middle, I think less so high school, but maybe also high school that is sort of combines a behavior analytic and relational frame perspective with things like mindfulness training, um, and, um, mindfulness training and a lot of like social and communicative aspects.
So I don't know if that answers your question, but that would be a way to go about it in a more mature setting and it includes like a lot of structured activities, uh, progress monitoring, data collection techniques and, and talking in a more higher level way, I guess about that kind of stuff.
Yeah.
Lindsay, I'll just touch on developing self-awareness as a foundation for executive functioning.
I use the resource flexible and focus by Adel Najdowski and find it helpful, but only with a specific profile learner.
So, yeah.
Sorry, this is, hi the interpreter jumping in.
Um, if you read it out, do you mind just reading out the full thing just because I can't, um, oh Yes, what You're reading.
Okay.
Wait, so do you want me to read, Just read the whole comments just as if you were the whole commenting Yourself.
Okay.
Alright.
Thank you.
Alright, so Emily said, thoughts on developing self-awareness skills as a foundation for executive functioning.
I've used the resource flexible and focused by Adel Nadjowski and find it helpful, but only with a specific profile of learner.
Yes, I agree wholeheartedly.
Uh, with that Emily and Adel and, uh, Jonathan Tarbox and those people have produced some really great material kind of in that same vein as I was talking about with Mark Dixon and the Aimes stuff.
Um, in terms of using this RFT based or, you know, hexa flex kind of stuff, um, I think that it does a great job of helping, uh, a higher functioning kid start to address things like, um, metacognition and, and a more sort of adult version or mature version of flexibility and even prioritization and, and planning.
Um, I think that those things can be really helpful, but as you say, um, I, I don't, it's i's hard to, um, talk about all the different things because it's gonna matter.
The profile of the learner is gonna matter a lot in terms of whether this would be appropriate for them or not.
Um, thank you for posting that, Shelly.
Yes.
So Lindsay said, what is an example of a tolerating program, uh, tolerating, waiting, tolerating mistakes, tolerating a change in schedule? Yeah.
All above, all the above tolerating losing a game, um, tolerating, uh, uh, uh, materials being moved.
Um, I, we, I remember recently, uh, working with a 13 year old who had, they had begun to have a lot of issues because he developed a lot of rigidity around, uh, schedule and task and work being written on a whiteboard that was on a table in his room with a specific, a specific whiteboard with a specific marker.
And he, it got to the point where if they were in a different part of the school, he would return to the classroom to write the task on, on the whiteboard with the marker.
It got very rigid and they, he was, um, uh, having some explosive episodes when not allowed to engage in that process.
And so in that specific example, what I'm trying to do is to try to find, to try to find the least amount of change that I can get away with or yeah, I can, I, I find a small change and just say like, where, where can we start to kind of pry this open in a way that isn't going to result in, in an explosive episode, but is going to expand and push back against this rigidity a little bit.
And, and we can supplement that with either contextual or non-con contextual reinforcement.
In his case, we're making some small ch some small changes and they were effective, but because of a time constraint we had to move on.
So we did end up even, we used some form of edible reinforcement, I think taken from his lunch maybe or something, I can't remember.
But, um, anyway, used it to, um, help supplement this tolerating along with some, some praise and also giving him some additional control over some other aspects of it.
But could he tolerate writing with a pencil and paper and then sort of moving step by step and step, so a different whiteboard, a different marker.
Um, we're gonna write most of 'em on a marker with a marker on the whiteboard, and then we're gonna switch to a piece of paper for one of 'em, and then just keep on sort of unpacking that and flexing it out until, um, until you, you're more, uh, on a naturalized skill.
Um, a tolerating, waiting, waiting program.
They're pretty, uh, same thing, pretty straightforward.
I, we did one, for example, for a kid who would elope, um, his sister went to the doctor quite frequently and he would need to wait in the waiting room and elope was becoming a problem.
So, um, we started and we started really small.
I think that would be the main thing that I would say to people, again, for a waiting program, for a tolerating program, for a lot of these skill building programs is, um, opening your mind in terms of what the, uh, parameters need to be to start, you know, going from zero to to anything is the hardest thing.
So you can make it really, really, really small.
You know, seconds, can you wait in the chair for three seconds or, um, anyway, breaking down something to a very small degree.
Um, cuz I, I think when I'm in, in the public school environment, I think what I tend to see most frequently is people getting frustrated and saying that the kid can't learn a skill.
And what we find out when we dig into it is that their baseline, that what they were asking, um, at the start was just something that was una unattainable for that particular individual.
And that by really reducing it sometimes by, you know, 90 or 95%, I mean you're, but you're able to get started in the right direction and from then on, you know, I think a lot of times, as soon as you can get the contingencies, you know, established and, and get enough, sometimes it's about reps.
You know, as soon as I can get enough reps with the kids so that they understand the contingency, then you can start to really ramp up the criteria.
Um, uh, lemme see.
We, Rebecca said we work with assistive technologies.
Do you have any favorite tools to support practicing EF skills? I, I was a big fan of, Uh, sorry Colin, this is just the interpreter.
Where are you reading that from the q and a.
That's from the q and a.
Okay.
Gimme half a second, I'm just gonna jump back to that.
Ok.
Get that interpreted.
Gotcha.
Okay.
So we work with Assistive Technologies.
Do you have any favorite tools to support practicing EF skills? Um, I've always been a fan of Choice Works because it's pretty intuitive and, um, choice Works is like a, a, a way to write out, um, tasks or lists or routines.
And then, um, the kid or the uh, uh, instructor can, can check off the things as you go.
Um, I like it because of the simplicity.
That one in particular.
There are, I think many, many great apps out there.
The issue is it's really hard to keep up with all the new stuff that gets released and, and a lot of the times I think you have to really, um, practice with something and gain some familiarity with it before you have a good feel for what the strengths and weaknesses are.
Um, I also, I will say I use Guided Access a lot in terms of if you have technology that's not necessarily assistive, but if you're working with technology that is addictive, um, I would say guide us Guided Access can be your friend.
Um, but Choice Works, um, would be my favorite in terms of, uh, like an app or, or something that can promote some EF skills, especially cause um, things like iPads and phones are so ubiquitous now.
Um, and that is something that plays just as well on a phone as it does on an iPad.
Uh, is there a resource for a high school student who struggles resource or strategy you can suggest? Oh, sorry, Sharon says, is there a resource or strategy you can suggest for me to use with a high school student who struggles with task initiation, um, for assignments? Um, one of the things that has helped me more, especially with a high school age kid, is, uh, some sort of contract, some sort of behavioral contract that has really clear, um, I guess, uh, really, really clear parameters and, and consequences.
Good consequences, bad consequences, and something that has a significant amount of input from, um, the kid.
Um, and again, going back to the, the point that was made earlier is it's, is really hard to say depending on the profile of the learner.
Um, but if we're talking about some, someone who's in, uh, a higher functioning level, I have some stuff that I'll send to Shelly about task initiation, but also, um, setting a timer.
I mean, there are very, there are very typical things that are kind of stock, but they are effective is, um, setting a timer for the amount of work that you're gonna do, or scheduling a certain amount of work that's very small.
So, um, trying to reduce the perceived effort, fullness of a task by only asking that the kid commit to it for a very short amount of time.
So we're gonna do one question and then you can step away, or if we're gonna work for 30 seconds and then you're gonna step away whenever I can.
And probably it goes across age ranges.
I try to stick with ratios or number of items rather than a time commitment because it, it just can get sketchy in terms of what the expectation is and, and stuff.
If you use a, how about you work for 30 minutes, it, it can easily get very ambiguous as to what exactly that means.
And then whether or not I'm gonna be satisfied with what I got from my 30 minutes.
So I'm much more likely to go with a ratio.
And again, it's sort of comes back to that skill building issue of like, the first thing that I'm gonna do is to try to break that, is to try to slim it down and even get to a point where maybe it feels a little silly, but, you know, can I get one problem? Can I get two problems, you know, and building from there.
Um, the, the hardest thing is to go from nothing to something like I said.
So if I can make that a task appear less effortful, um, if there's a way to present it in terms of a ratio rather than a time commitment, um, that would be how I would start with that.
And there are other, some other resources that I'm, I just can't quite remember what the name of it is, but I'll give it to Shelly afterwards.
Um, uh, Megan, uh, I support a six year old autistic learner with strong language skills, who is having difficulty when they get frustrated with peers inhibiting the urge to push or hit the peer.
And school staff are encouraging the learner to use words instead to express frustration.
Staff refers to it as impulsivity.
I know this issue can come up frequently with my younger students.
Yes, I'm not exactly sure where the breakdown is.
Response inhibition, emotional regulation, or a combination of skills.
Any suggestions on where to start with something like this? Um, that is excellent, thank you Megan.
Um, and I think speaks to that, that main issue that we talked about at the top is that, you know, do I think this is an a response inhibition problem? Do I think this is an emotional control problem? Could it be both? Is it, is it necessary for me to even know for sure in order to try to address this? And I think the answer is to the last part is not necessarily, um, I think it could, it is probably could be impulsive, but it can also be related to emotional control.
And, um, let me think about this.
I'm not exactly sure where the breakdown is.
Response, ambition, emotional regulation or combination.
Um, where I would start with it is, I guess I would wanna know what kinds of things it happens with.
Are there any kinds of toys it doesn't happen with? Um, are there peers that it happens within, peers that it doesn't happen with? Uh, the other, when it does happen, how do staff react, do different staff react differently to it? Um, encouraging the learner to use words instead to express frustration.
The other thing that I would, I would say maybe about that, that might be relevant to is, um, encouraging the learner to use words instead of express frustration is a great way to start.
And for a kid who's high functioning, who's six years old, who has good language, we might wanna start even going beyond that.
Um, can we teach a multiple ways to express frustration or do we start teaching thinking about teaching a sort of hierarchical train chain of, of planning or problem solving? So more than we go beyond the hey, if, if, if, uh, if Michael does that to you, you can tell him, I don't like that.
We're very good at doing that.
And then if Michael does it anyway, it's like, yeah.
So developing the second and third line of that to be like, if he doesn't stop after that, what are we going to do? You know, are there, what is the next option after I've used my words? Um, because maybe what we're also running into is just a little bit of a vacuum of, I use my words, it didn't work, I don't have, I don't have a next thing to go to now, so I'll revert back to the, the, uh, aggression or, um, hitting what have you.
Um, so I think you can, you can try to approach it in terms of teaching a chain of behavior, but I would also wanna know also what's happening with the peers in that circumstance.
Um, and how, how that behavior, the pushing or hitting behavior, is it successful? Uh, how does it get reacted to by staff? Does it result in any sort of consequence? Um, how consistent is that being delivered? Those kinds of questions.
Um, how can parents, oh sorry.
Anonymous attendee says, how best can parents learn to use the simplest pictures, picture schedules at home? Any websites? I would, I, I would again go back to choice works as it, it's, I don't think it, I think it's like 10 bucks, but it's convenient because then you can put it on a phone or on an iPad.
And I feel like those are just so common now.
But how best can parents use to learn to use the simplest picture schedules at home? I think that I would recommend that if a parent wanted to learn how to use a picture schedule first, are we talking about a schedule that the kid has any control over or are we talking about a routine that we're trying that to get them to be independent with? If that makes, um, sense.
So are we talking about, I come home from school and then I have, you know, I do my homework and then I go outside and then I watch TV and then we have dinner and then I have free play and then I brush a teeth and go to something like that.
That's like a long amount of time and something which a kid might have a say or maybe they have a say in, in when some of that happens, but not when other things happen or, um, are we talking about toothbrushing, which is also a sequence but is much more compact and the there are choices.
Maybe there are some choices, but there're arbitrary.
Do you put the toothpaste on before or after you put the water on the brush, something like that.
Um, and the idea is really that we're teaching a routine that ultimately doesn't need a visual schedule.
I would start parents teaching them about the ideas of a visual schedule with the toothbrushing thing and then move to something larger or longer, but be clear about the distinction of, we're using this and eventually the whole visual schedule is gonna go away because this is a routine that should be me memorized versus this is something that's going to change every single day.
And a kid may or may not have a certain amount of control over it.
It's maybe more useful, but it's also more complicated because then you're gonna have to get into parents with negotiating about what goes on the schedule or what happens if parts of the schedule aren't followed or are followed, et cetera.
All right, Colin, I see, uh, we'll take one last question.
Suzanne has a question.
Um, and I'm just going to promote Suzanne to a panelist so she can turn her camera on so the interpreter can see her.
Hopefully this will work.
There we go.
So Suzanne, you should be able to turn your camera on, I hope.
Yes.
Um, fantastic presentation.
I really enjoyed it.
Wow.
My question is related to break times.
So for example, the teacher will give a worksheet and there was a lot of questions.
So what the teacher would do was kind of spread it out a little bit because oftentimes the student would get overwhelmed and resist and then they would kind of shut down.
So if there was a break there to try to prevent that overwhelm, um, how long would you recommend it be? Five minutes, 10 minutes? What's a, what's a typical timeframe for that? Oh boy.
Okay.
I at the risk of, um, again, again, like everything is context specific.
It depends on the kid and stuff, a large part, but broadly, I would say if I'm doing like a how, if you wouldn't mind asking how old 11.
Okay.
I don't want to get into trouble by, um, you know, because every situation it has ever five minutes feels long to me.
And like I'm thinking like for an 11 year old, if it's an in between or if it's just to break up the activity and they're at the table and it's like, I just need to set this aside for a second and have a little break, I'm thinking I, I would lean more towards like a minute.
And once you get much beyond that, because you're totally right, I think in your suspicion that you're gonna get diminishing returns on that after a while where it's the, the break isn't a, it's, it's no longer serving as as much of a reinforcer because the extra time doesn't really count, but it does do a lot to kind of get away from the kind of whole what are we doing here with this activity.
I think you do tend to hit a certain point of that with like time-based breaks.
So if you're doing a, within an activity break, I would try to get away with the shortest thing that you can and I would start with like a minute or less and see if you can get away with that.
Cause I think as soon as you get in my mind for most kids, unless you got to like a much older kid, um, once you get like above five minutes, I, i don't know, and maybe I, I may be proven wrong by this, but I get very suspicious about whether or not the kid really notices the difference.
But what it does serve to do is to kind of just move us further away from whatever is going on here.
You know what I mean? So yeah.
And then you start to also get into like side issues of like a five minute chunk and now the staff are kind of distracted and they're, they gotta reengage and it just, it, so yeah, for all for that reason then for like logistical reasons, I try to keep 'em short just to kind of keep, keep it rolling So minute or so.
Alright.
No, that's, that's one part of my question.
And then for that break, would you recommend the students stay at that table? Sometimes they go to the learning center, um, for a longer break for a half hour or whatever and do their, their independent play time.
It really depends on their schedule, but I guess just trying to figure out if them going to another environment such as a learning center for a chance to really settle down before they come back makes sense if that's a good strategy.
Yeah, again, I got, I guess I got go back to like what, yeah, it depends, but I would want to try it at the desk and see same thing just for the like efficiency's sake.
Um, can I do that or, or can I modify? Or maybe if it's even easier to modify the desk environment in the sense of like, I'm completely removing the work off the table, you know, but then you're not eating up all the transition time to get there and back from the learning center.
Um, like I said, it all, it all depends on whether or not it works.
And if it works, then great, and if it doesn't work then we, we need, need to go back and find a, a different solution.
But yeah, I would try to do shorter breaks in the middle and if I, if a kid had a preference or if they wanted, they really had a strong preference for a longer break and like, I'm not interested in this, I might then go back and think, well now that they're exhibiting this preference, can I trade? Would they, can we tokenize this? Or I'll give them, I'll give them a token and they can spend the token in the moment on one minute at the desk or they can put it in the pot that they can spend at the, you know, learning resource center later on.
And then that way you're also giving them some control over whether or not sort of self-regulatory control over whether or not I really want this break right now or need it or can I bank it for later.
Great.
Thank you so much.
I really appreciate that.
Thank you.
You're welcome.
Thank you.
And I'll just echo that.
Thank you so much Colin.
So many great strategies, so much to think about.
I'm thinking about 10 different learners that I've worked with in the past and how I could have probably used some of these strategies and approaches better than I did.
So I really appreciate it.
Um, appreciate your time and certainly, um, thanks to everyone for joining the presentation.
Hopefully we'll maybe have an opportunity, sorry, an opportunity to, uh, maybe work with you again in the future and expand on some of these and maybe some smaller group sessions and that kind of thing.
So we really appreciate you joining us.
That would be great.
And thank you everyone for bearing with me.
It's a, it's a big topic and, and a big group of kids.
We're trying to put the umbrella over here, but I hope I give people some jumping off points.
There's a lot of good resources out there, the ones I named and then there really are tons and tons more.
Um, and so please, yeah, if you have questions, dig into those or send Shelly an email and she'll get it to me and I'll try to answer it as best I can.
But thank you all for your time.