Today I attended Michelle Garcia Winner's Think Social Institute. First of all, she is a great speaker, and I have used some of her work with success. I am quite excited for the rest of the conference.
Once of the topics covered today was assessment. She discussed how most assessments are interview based and with high-functioning autism (HFA) and Asperger's (AS) they may know how to answer the questions sufficiency. So Garcia Winner developed the double interview. The first part looks similar to some of the interview parts of the ADOS. Garcia Winner asks them about various aspects of their life. Next, she presents three pictures from her life and together they talked about who the people might be and why she might have those pictures. Then she tells the individual it's their turn to interview her. She provides as much prompts as needed (i.e. writing down the WH words.) I think this is a strategies I may begin to incorporate into my own assessments.
One of the key points she brought up was how much adults tend to compensate during assessment. While the individual may be perfectly capable having a conversation that is lead by an assessment topic on a preferred topic, that may be their only area of expertise in the wide world of conversation. When training for the ADOS this point is often brought up as well: Compare to neurotypical peers... not to other individuals on the Autism spectrum.
0 comments:
Post a Comment