LA: A recent research authored by Leah Ticker Hiller, Sandy Takata and Barbara L.Thompson (Division of Occupational Science and Occupational Therapy, Department of Cell and Neurobiology and Department of Pediatrics, Keck School of Medicine, in University of Southern California, Los Angeles) found that children with autism prefer a conditioned place over social interaction.
Social impairment is a telltale sign of a differently abled child or infant. Unfortunately, an inability to take part in social situations become an unavoidable downside for children with language impairment, and leads to future distress in securing a career.
Since, ASD is a form of developmental disorder, is has become important to understand the emotional construct of an autistic child.
Children in general are normally not proficient in expressing themselves. It becomes even more difficult to understand the processing capabilities of a non-verbal autistic child.
Castle design to study Conditional Place Preference in 12 children with Autism
However challenging it may be, it is necessary to understand the processing capabilities in children with autism to provide active therapy to improve upon them. It is this lack of processing, which affects social interaction.
When, worked upon, this very lack of processing can be improved to better social skills, adaptive capacities, academic understandings and problem-solving logic.
Since language as a mode of communication between mind and the social surrounding, does not work with people within the Spectrum, it has become necessary to find methods of communication to express emotions beyond the structured method of language.
In the experiment the authors for the very first time used the Conditional Place Preference or CPP, a known process used in animal paradigm to understand the stimuli of motivation, aversion and reward, thus attempting to grasp the emotional tendencies of non verbal entities.
It was investigated whether nonverbal children can learn CPP.
12 differently abled children, 7 female and 5 male between ages 2.5 to 5 years took part in the research. The study was conducted using toys alongs with a custom designed child-friendly castle as the Conditioned Stimulus or CS.
All children who participated were assessed via the MSEL or the Mullen Scales of Early Learning, which evaluated the Gross Motor Skills, Fine Motor Skills, Visual Receptions, Expressive and Receptive Language.
The children were observed in a CPP paradigm, designed as a three room castle. Within it, there were 2 training room connected via a smaller neutral room. Each room had a number of child friendly toys, rugs, pillows tables, books, puzzles to engage the children for the initial and final preference tests. The only difference was one room was green, the other orange.
Children were allowed to explore the two training rooms via the neutral connecting room, for almost 6 mins with an adult after which the children where brought out and new toys were introduced in the rooms to provide Unconditioned Stimuli or US.
The children were then re-introduced to the room, however, this time, they were allowed to visit the rooms alternately.
It was found that the children did not show any preference towards the rooms in the initial test. However, during the final preference test, significant differences were found between the rooms as chosen by the subjects.
A study like this shows that there are methods to understand the emotional responses of a non-verbal autistic child, that goes beyond teaching them language and formatted expressions.
With further work, and more detailed studies the CPP technique can used to understand the behavioural methods of an autistic individual.
I am Ash and I celebrate Neurodiversity! Growing up with an elder brother with severe Autism was tough – but it has also taught me essential life lessons. I don’t believe that people with Autism are necessarily or have any disorder (except in extreme cases). They are just different! And that is something to be proud of! I am passionate about helping other families who may have Autism conditions in their family. So please reach out and drop me a note. I will be glad to help 🙂
