| Children and adults with autism are known to have | | | | included attention, demand, play, and alone. The authors |
| difficulty understanding spoken language. Images, and | | | | found that the student exhibited the most self-injurious |
| sometimes text, convey meaning for people who are | | | | behaviors during academic demand contexts and not |
| unable to process spoken language. Research has | | | | during the no interaction or play contexts. The authors |
| found that children who use picture schedules are | | | | also found that if a demand session was followed by |
| more engaged and less likely to exhibit challenging | | | | an attention session, self-injurious behavior seemed to |
| behaviors. Picture schedules are images and/or text | | | | carry over. |
| arranged in a sequence that describe upcoming | | | | A schedule that consisted of a sequence of |
| events or activities. Individualized schedules may act as | | | | demand-no interaction-play-demand was compared to |
| a form of antecedent intervention to reduce | | | | a no schedule condition. Results of the comparison of |
| challenging behaviors as they may limit the impact of | | | | the no schedule/schedule condition found that there |
| new settings, demands, or activities. | | | | was significantly less self-injury during the Schedule |
| In an article published in the Journal of Autism and | | | | condition. In addition, levels of engagement were |
| Developmental Disorders in June, 2005, a student with | | | | relatively high during the Schedule condition. |
| severe autism was exposed to an activity schedule | | | | O'Reilly, M., Sigafoos, J., Lancioni, G., Edrisinha, C., and |
| that had been carefully prepared based on functional | | | | Andrews, A. (2005). Journal of Autism and |
| analysis. This analysis examined contexts in which | | | | Developmental Disorders, Vol. 35, No. 3. |
| self-injury did and did not occur. These contexts | | | | |