Asperger's Conversations

Colleges and Spectrum Disorders

A recent article in The Chronicle of Higher Education discussed a program at Boston University run by Lorraine Wolf in the Disabilities office that provides additional services to college students with Asperger's or related problems.  The program operates by charging these students an additional $4,500 in fees to cover the costs of the time spent by college staff.  The idea is an interesting one, but very different from what we are doing in our program at Keene State College.  Our program is free to both college students or others in the community with AS or HFA and is supported by a variety of grants.  We even provide discrete trials training to young children with autism at no cost.

In today's MP3 audio program, I talk more about this program and include commentary by my colleague, Dr. Linda Baker, co-founder of our program and Professor of Psychology at KSC.  Click on the link below to hear today's program:

Download pr2_complete.mp3 (8mins, 40 secs; 2.95 MB)

Discrete Trials Training

There have been several recent articles on autism in the NY Times in which the importance of early intervention (before age 3) has been mentioned.  They make passing reference, for example to the only empirically validated treatment, known as Discrete Trials Training, in a recent 12/14 article.  A huge problem is that parents (and schools) are unable to find therapists who know how to do this type of therapy.  The other problem is getting schools to pay for the proper number of hours per week that are indicated for successful treatment (at least 30 hours/week according to studies by Lovaas in California).  Many school districts will offer only 10 hours per week which is usually not enough.

Here in Keene, NH we have again been using the College as a terrific source of free labor:  Motivated undergraduate students.  We brought local behavioral consultant John Moran, Ed.D. on board as an Adjunct Prof. to train Psychology students as part of an applied practicum in psychology.  John has personally trained over 40 students in the past few years, many of whom are delivering discrete trials to children with autism in the Keene area.  In many cases, they do so in return for course credit only!

In a future MP3 file I will present information about this program.  The big idea:  Use College students as a source of therapists, whether it be peer mentors for Asperger's Syndrome or discrete trials trainers for early childhool autism.

Peer Mentoring for Asperger's

My plan is to make Asperger's Conversations a place for various forms of commentary (audio, text) on current issues in Asperger's and high functioning autism.  Some will reflect research and clinical activites here at the Asperger Resource Group of Keene State College which includes studies in speech styles, decoding of emotion in voice and face, effects of parent support, and college-based peer mentoring.

In today's post, I am discussing a peer mentoring program here at the college which uses "typical" (non-Asperger, non-autistic) college student to provide support for those with spectrum disorders.  College students with Asperger's are assigned one to four mentors who spend between 5 and 10 hours per week with their mentors.  These mentors provide them with feedback about social skills, help them to develop social networks, expose them to new types of social and non-academic activities, and otherwise befriend them.  The mentors, in turn, attend bi-weekly group supervision meetings with clinical faculty and receive course credit in applied psychology.

Click here to listen to brief commentary and interviews with two college students receiving mentoring services:

MP3 on mentoring (3.7MB, 7.5 minutes)