Asperger's Syndrome

Our Asperger's program is built around Fast ForWord software, generally at home with professional oversight.  This program strengthens underlying cognitive skills to slow the world down for the Asperger's child, making it more manageable.

Improve social skills through better language processing

A child with Asperger’s Syndrome may often have challenges in oral and written comprehension. Understanding is weak because he misses the nuances, inferences and other critical aspects of communications. Ambiguity, weak language vocabulary, poor language structure and pragmatics may also cause confusion. For a significant proportion of Asperger children cognitive weaknesses such as a poor working memory, lack of attention and auditory processing skills can prevent the mastery of language and reading.

These weaknesses may hide true strengths.  Instead of being challenged at school he may have a frustrating experience and perhaps develop a sense of alienation from academic work. Equally when his receptive language is weak he can have problems in the classroom and socially. Somehow he doesn't get the flow of the conversations and can feel excluded. This may lead to low self-esteem, social exclusion and a lack of motivation.

However language skills can be improved. There are now products and teaching methods that can effectively deal with his priorities.   Comprehension skills can also be developed. Cognitive skills can be improved. You may need to supplement the existing academic curriculum to ensure that your child meets his potential.

There are several intervention steps:

1. An initial assessment is essential, to create a personalized program to address the priority areas.
   
   
2. Consider using a computer based training program which allows a sense of control, privacy and which includes a lot of stimulation and motivation.
   
   
3. Finally the program should be designed to assist him or her in fundamental language skills right through high level comprehension exercises.

Fast ForWord for Asperger's

By making language processing more automatic and less diverting, Fast ForWord is able to help Asperger's Syndrome in often dramatic ways.  In fact, this is one of the fastest growing uses of this powerful software. Learn more about Fast ForWord

Children can be taught to improve their social skills in much the same way as they acquire another skill such as playing a musical instrument.  Language and reading work should include exercises designed to build attention span to comprehension strategies, language pragmatics, verbal reasoning and vocabulary development. There must be a focus on the reduction of ambiguity, coping with figures of speech, improving listening skills, dealing with abstractions, imprecise expressions and so on.

At the end of the course the student should be significantly better in his reading and language skills. His self-confidence will grow as he becomes more proficient in his comprehension and more fluent in his reading. He should be sharper and more alert in conversations. The improvement of receptive skills will also lead to the improvement of his or her expressive language. He will be more able to get to the point and express himself in a precise and concise way.

Reading is the gateway to learning and is a fundamental skill that will help your child reach their full potential.  Fast ForWord software has had great success with Asperger's Syndrome. Here is an article first published in Autism Asperger's Digest that describes the results.
Autism Aspergers Digest Article