Strategies to Facilitate Transitions of Students with Autism

Principal Investigator:
Justyna Zemel

Faculty Advisor:
Daphna El Roy

Abstract:
The transitioning process can be challenging for children with autism because they often have difficulty with unexpected changes in their activities, settings or routines. Therefore, implementing successful transitioning techniques is an important and critical endeavor in their lives. Whether it is transitioning from one activity to another within the same environment or moving between different environments, many students with autism can benefit from evidence-based strategies that ease their transitional processes. These transitional techniques can help the students with autism to promote their independence. Interventions applied have included technology, visual supports, music-infused video modeling, picture self-monitoring, peer-mediated procedures, and physical and verbal prompting. A survey was used to investigate to what extent the procedures found effective in the literature were being used by professionals employed by a school district, and how effective they rated the procedures they used to be. Based on the data collected, the interventions used most, as reported by the participants, were visual supports with verbal and physical prompts (used by 100% of participants), photographic cues with a verbal cue (used by 93%), self-management techniques (93%), visual activity schedules (87%), visual supports with function-based intervention at (73%), and picture exchange communication system (73%). Of those professionals surveyed, 86% found the interventions they used to be effective or very effective. Participants may use these strategies because they are easily accessible, flexible, and practical to implement.