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Phil Strain I’m Phil Strain from the University of Colorado at Denver, and what I’d like
to share with you today is some of the most recent research that has been conducted on
the inclusion of young children with autism with their typically developing peers. One
of the…one of the most interesting findings is that we know that for inclusion to produce
the effects that we would like to have it produce on children’s social development—that
has to happen every day. And that’s something that doesn’t typically happen for young
children with autism. We know, for example, from the special education reports to Congress
that this is a group of children who are the least likely to experience inclusionary services,
although the data would suggest that perhaps they are the group that benefit from it the
most—one of those unfortunate ironies related to individuals with special needs in our country.
So the first thing I’d like to emphasis is the importance that inclusion occur on
a daily basis. It also implies that it’s systematic, that it’s planful, that there
is attention given to typically developing children such that they are readily prepared
to be successful at interacting with their peers with autism. So, in addition to this
notion about the importance of the intensity, if you will, of inclusionary services, we
also know that within inclusionary programs themselves, that young children with autism
may segregate themselves out, especially in choice time situations, in free time situations.
And what that results in is really two separate groups of children at any one point in time—children
with autism in one area of the classroom, typically the developing children in another
area, and when that occurs, a really interesting phenomena takes place. That is, the autistic
symptoms of children spike or dramatically increase. As it turns out, the inverse is
true as well. That is to say that when children are in integrated setting within an inclusive
classroom—that is typically developing children and children with autism are in close physical
proximity, you get a dramatic reduction in autistic-like behaviors. And I’m one of
those folks who believes that if you can get something for cheap or relatively speaking,
free, you should go for it. This is one of the significant benefits from inclusive services,
namely some moderation in autistic symptomology, and most of us in this field work really hard
to get small behavior change in children with autism and we work really hard to achieve
that. If we can get something for less effort, perhaps that’s something that we should
pay attention to. Another thing that we know about inclusive services for young children
with autism is that it’s the context in which the most effective interventions take
place in the peer-related social skill domain. While there’s certainly some professional
disagreement regarding what I’m about to say, I’m comfortable contending that the
primary characteristic that distinguishes children with autism from other children with
significant developmental disabilities is their problems in the peer social skill domain.
If that is true, then it makes sense that we focus a large portion of our efforts in
terms of remediating those particular problems. As it turns out, the most effective intervention
is one in which we teach typically developing kids to engage in repeated and persistent
social overtures towards their peers with autism. To do that, of course, requires an
inclusive setting. Well, what does this mean? This means that the predominant use of developmentally
segregated settings for young children with autism automatically precludes them from receiving
the most effective service possible to remediate their core deficit. That’s the significant
issue in our field and one that many of us are working towards ameliorating on a national-wide
basis. The other thing that we have found out about inclusionary services is that there
are huge benefits for typically developing children. When we first started to include
typically developing kids with children with autism—my experience began in 1980—I and
others like me were vilified. There were concerns voiced about the impact on typically developing
children; essentially saying what’s going to happen when the catch autism, what’s
going to happen when they start engaging in autistic-like behavior—they’re going to
experience developmental deterioration from this experience. Well, as it turns out,
that’s hardly the case and what happens, in fact, is that when typically developing
children are provided the skills necessary to impact the social and communicative behavior
of their peers with autism, they develop an incredible empathy and sensitivity towards
people who are different than they. And this is in contrast to research that we’ve done
on other typically developing children who experience preschool without direct contact
with people with special needs, and by the time they’re four and five years old, they’ve
developed what looks like adult stereotypic behavior towards people who are different
than they. In other words, if they see people not being successful, they tend to think that
those individuals should be punished for their lack of fluency doing some task, their lack
of fluency speaking, their lack of fluency talking and communicating. And that represents
a significant difference in terms of the peer groups that one can grow up experiencing—either
a peer group that sees you at your best and says to themselves, you know, if I had about
five minutes I could teach you how to do that better, versus a peer group that sees you
not at your best and says something to the effect of you should be punished, or kids
like you aren’t any good. It’s sort of like preschoolers have read Pygmalion in the
classroom or somebody has read it to them and they develop these negative stereotypes.
And I guess the question for all of us to ponder is who’s taught those typically developing
children that it’s okay to think that way and to feel that way towards people who are
different than they. Finally, let me just say that one of the biggest myths that we
have around inclusion of young kids with autism is that somehow kids who are, if you will,
higher-functioning are better candidates for inclusive services—and that is totally inconsistent
with the data. So in our model program, LEAP Preschool and the other kind of nationally
recognized inclusionary model run by Gail McGee, the Walden Center in Atlanta, Georgia,
there’s basically zero correlation between where kids began developmentally speaking
and where they wind up in these inclusionary programs. And to have zero correlation means
that the following takes place—that is, some of the highest functioning, if you will,
kids, do the worst and some of the lowest functioning kids do the best. That’s the
only way that you can come up with this zero correlation. But what does this mean in terms
of service delivery? Well, it means that the usual model of let’s get Phil ready for
inclusive services is inconsistent with the data that we have at this point. The data
suggests that kids should get enrolled and we should work our best to facilitate their
development in these inclusive settings. Thank you very much! You’re welcome very much.