Autism Activity Week: Activity 1: A Multi-Modal Auditory-Visual Integration and Language Primer

Age Range- 0-10 depending upon skill level of child

Materials: Hear-Say English Language Program by Donald S. Rivera., CD player

I came up with the idea to use this program when my daughter and I were in a library near my son's treatment center. She and I spent a lot of time in this library because it was so close and the treatment center was 50 miles from our house, which made it impractical to return home for the 4 hours a day he spent there. While browsing I came across the Hear-Say English program and saw a lot of potential in the program for kids with autism and typically developing children alike. This activity quickly became one of my children's favorite activities. I'm not suggesting you necessarily buy the program as it is quite expensive, but try checking with your local library or other resources to see if they've got it (two different library systems I use had it). 

The program is very simple. It has a workbook and an audio CD. Play the audio CD and it will have several categories of English words (also available in other languages). For example, the "animals" page in the workbook has pictures corresponding to several everyday animals (e.g. donkey, frog, etc.). The audio CD will play an actual sound a particular animal makes, not someone making a "woof woof" sound in English, but (in most cases) an actual real-life sound such as how a dog's barking. This is immediately followed by the word for the sound. 

Practiced by itself, I think this program can have several benefits for a child with autism. Right off the bat, the most obvious benefit is speech and language development. The program pairs an image (nice since kids with autism tend to be visual learners), auditory representation, and the verbal example of the thing together. I'm not an expert, but I would guess that this pairing of sound, word and image are particularly helpful to a child with autism in developing a vocabulary and a more complete understanding of a particular word/idea. A second benefit is that the program by putting the words into categories such as animals, In The Garage etc., it provides children with autism another opportunity to learn to categorize words. Learning to categorize words is a building block to speech development and abstract thinking. 

My Modifications

After trying the program at home, I decided that I could make a few changes and make the program a little more fun, and add some additional skill components to it. Instead of using the work book provided with the program, I made my own work book. Here are the steps I followed, I'll explain why I chose to make my own work book afterwards:

1.  I did a Google images search using "Free clip art images" [specific vocabulary word from Hear-Say English Program].
2.  I put the category title (e.g. animals) at the top of each page, and chose the best clip art picture available. 
3. I put a text box with no background on top of each clip art image and typed the vocabulary word in each text box so the word was write on top of the image. 
4. Lastly, I mixed up the images all over the page instead putting them in order of how the sound-word pairs are presented in the audio CD . 

The Hear-Say English activity book has the images in order of how they are presented, this might be nice for the first few times the learner listens to the program. However, by mixing the images up on the page I believe I improved the value of the program, and helped make it into a game. This simple modification turned the program into a look and find game and added a visual discrimination/visual attention task to the program. Some children with autism are thought to have difficulty with visual discrimination and attention tasks. Visual searching tasks are thought to be beneficial for learning to visually discriminate objects and visually attend to a task. Making this one modification to the program not only adds a game component to the program (making it a bit less boring), but also engages another brain process in the activity. The reason for adding the text across the image modification was to increase the literacy component for those kids that are in the process of learning to read.

Regardless of whether you use the regular workbook or make your own, the reason I most wanted to use the program was for the sensory component. The program is a natural auditory integration activity. The program is full of every day sounds that our children need to learn to process, and many children with autism have difficulty processing auditory information. Some have very strong reactions (covering ears, meltdowns, etc.) to hearing the sounds of some of the things covered in the program. I believe the activity can help a child make sense of and better process some of the sounds they hear on a day to day basis, and maybe even make some of them less frightening. I think this activity is great for developing more comfort with these sounds in a fun and controlled environment, giving you control over the when and where, and the volume of the sounds. That being said, do not use this activity if you feel it would be too stressful or otherwise harmful to your child. I hope your kids get as much enjoyment as mine do. 


Note: These activities are meant to be fun and potentially beneficial activities to do with your child at home. They do not take the place of professional treatment or advice. Be sure to ask a professional whether these activities are appropriate for your child if you have any concerns.