 
NORTH ADAMS — A veteran special education teacher has penned a book she hopes will help teachers and students better understand children diagnosed with autism and autism spectrum disorders.
Sullivan Elementary School third-grade teacher Anna Saldo-Burke, who has worked with special education students inside and outside of the regular classroom for 27 years, said the book, “Green Mittens Covered Her Ears: A Look at Autism,” is based on her lifelong friendship with autistic Williamstown artist Jessica Park. Now in her 50s, Park is nationally known for her brightly-colored architectural renderings.
“At the beginning of each school year, I read a book about tolerance and not taking people at face value to my class to set the tone for the year,” Saldo-Burke said Wednesday during an interview at Sullivan. “But I’ve never had a book about this subject. Autism is on the rise, and children are having more and more exposure to children with the diagnosis.”
Autism is a developmental disability affecting verbal and non-verbal communication and social interaction, that varies in intensity with each individual.
“What is different about autism is that it’s not visibly evident as other disabilities, such as needing to use a wheelchair. These children look ‘normal,’ so their abnormal behaviors and coping strategies are more evident,” she said. “We as a society must look beyond the obvious.
There are a whole realm of reasons behind the things these children do. Many of them will rock — not just for the sake of repetition, but because they need the motion to help calm them down.”
Many children with the diagnosis of autism or autism spectrum disorder often have sensory sensitivity issues, she said.
“Sometimes the child might look like they’re ignoring you, but in fact they’re not even hearing you,” Saldo-Burke said. “Other times they need stimulation to keep them focused. It’s very individualized. As a teacher, my goal is for all of my students to succeed. Sometimes that requires a teacher to look beyond the obvious and find that a disability can translate into success in another area.”
Saldo-Burke and her twin sister, Diane, first met Park as children. Over the years, they would interact with her at school — sharing classroom space in an art room and eventually becoming tutors and summer companions.
“When Jessica’s parents went to the shore for the summer, we would go with them as companions,” she said.
With the belief that Park’s disability wasn’t an excuse, the sisters pushed her to let go of some of her rituals, including covering her ears with her hands, rocking in doorways, avoiding saying her own name and compulsively sifting through “plastics” that she kept in a kitchen pot.
“People with disabilities have to adjust — they still have to do certain things that we have to do, but we have to help them,” she said. “Jessica had a positive reward system for doing certain things. We just added a negative point system for behaviors that needed to change. We were young and quite naive at the time. We didn’t know what we were doing was going to help Jessica in the way it did. We didn’t know what we were doing was desensitizing her — we had no sense of failure. It just made sense to us.”
Since then, Saldo-Burke has developed vocational and life skills programs for children with Downs syndrome and autism within the North Adams Public Schools, eventually taking an elementary school teaching position after laws changed and special education students were returned to the regular classrooms.
“I wrote this book for youth, but believe it has a wide appeal,” she said. “I think it will help many adults, including teaching students, who have very limited exposure to these types of students. I think its also very helpful for families who have just received a diagnosis.”
“Green Mittens Covered Her Ears: A Look At Autism” is available at Papyri Books in North Adams, Water Street Books in Williamstown, the Bookloft in Great Barrington, Book House in Albany, N.Y., and online at Amazon.com.
For more information, visit www.lookatautism.com.
To reach Jennifer Huberdeau,
e-mail jhuberdeau@thetranscript.com.
 
How often do you lament, “If only I were more motivated, I could get so much done and be successful� For many of us, motivation seems hard to find. Whenever a tough project pops up or we have to do something we’ve been dreading — whether it’s stripping the wallpaper in the bedroom or collecting the year’s receipts at tax time — our motivation vanishes.
Here’s an excerpt from my recent article on how to find it, keep it, and overcome the most common roadblocks along the way.
1. Assess your values. Consider whether the task at hand aligns with your values, Maynard said. To figure out your values, she suggested asking, “How do you want to see yourself in the world today?†Another way to think of this is to mull over what accomplishing the task would give you “that is even more important than having accomplished the goal itself,†Maynard writes in her own list of tips.
2. Ask why. We’re experts at rationalizing why we didn’t do something, but instead of focusing on excuses, ask another why: Why is this task important? It doesn’t matter whether you created the task or if it was assigned to you. “Connect with a larger reason of why you’re doing this,†Maynard said. She gave the example of a client who procrastinated on noncreative aspects of her business like billing. That client’s “why†became financial security for her family.
3. Create a top 10 list. One of Maynard’s clients created and framed a list of top 10 reasons to get his degree. He put it on his desk as a daily reminder. When Maynard was training for a 50-mile race, in addition to her physical preparation, she needed to train mentally. On tiny pieces of paper, Maynard wrote “I will love running all day,†which she posted anywhere she’d see them. “That mental preparation kept me going in the end when I didn’t want to go any longer,†she said. Visual reminders keep you going when the going gets tough — or boring.
4. Reframe your goals. According to Maynard, you’re much more likely to be motivated when your goal is a positive one, when you’re moving toward something you really want to accomplish. Revise your goal with positive words, “so you are nourishing yourself with what you want, instead of denying yourself the things you don’t want,†Maynard writes.
Click here to continue reading the 10 Ways to Find New Motivation and Rise Above Roadblocks.
Source:Â http://psychcentral.com/blog/archives/2010/05/13/10-ways-to-find-new-motivation/
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How often do you lament, “If only I were more motivated, I could get so much done and be successful� For many of us, motivation seems hard to find. Whenever a tough project pops up or we have to do something we’ve been dreading — whether it’s stripping the wallpaper in the bedroom or collecting the year’s receipts at tax time — our motivation vanishes.
Here’s an excerpt from my recent article on how to find it, keep it, and overcome the most common roadblocks along the way.
1. Assess your values. Consider whether the task at hand aligns with your values, Maynard said. To figure out your values, she suggested asking, “How do you want to see yourself in the world today?†Another way to think of this is to mull over what accomplishing the task would give you “that is even more important than having accomplished the goal itself,†Maynard writes in her own list of tips.
2. Ask why. We’re experts at rationalizing why we didn’t do something, but instead of focusing on excuses, ask another why: Why is this task important? It doesn’t matter whether you created the task or if it was assigned to you. “Connect with a larger reason of why you’re doing this,†Maynard said. She gave the example of a client who procrastinated on noncreative aspects of her business like billing. That client’s “why†became financial security for her family.
3. Create a top 10 list. One of Maynard’s clients created and framed a list of top 10 reasons to get his degree. He put it on his desk as a daily reminder. When Maynard was training for a 50-mile race, in addition to her physical preparation, she needed to train mentally. On tiny pieces of paper, Maynard wrote “I will love running all day,†which she posted anywhere she’d see them. “That mental preparation kept me going in the end when I didn’t want to go any longer,†she said. Visual reminders keep you going when the going gets tough — or boring.
4. Reframe your goals. According to Maynard, you’re much more likely to be motivated when your goal is a positive one, when you’re moving toward something you really want to accomplish. Revise your goal with positive words, “so you are nourishing yourself with what you want, instead of denying yourself the things you don’t want,†Maynard writes.
Click here to continue reading the 10 Ways to Find New Motivation and Rise Above Roadblocks.
Source:Â http://psychcentral.com/blog/archives/2010/05/13/10-ways-to-find-new-motivation/
 
Article Date: 13 May 2010 – 5:00 PDT
Nearly one-third of patients with irritable bowel syndrome (IBS) who underwent a novel behavior treatment developed by a University at Buffalo behavioral scientist achieved significant relief within four weeks of beginning treatment.
These patients, called “rapid responders” maintained their improvement at a three-month follow-up, despite reporting more severe IBS symptoms when they started the treatment.
Results also showed that the amount of “face time” spent with a therapist during the 10-week treatment regimen didn’t have an effect on rapid response.
The study is published in the current issue of the journal Clinical Gastroenterology and Hepatology.
“These results are important, because conventional wisdom states that benefit from behavioral treatments is tied to the amount of treatment patients receive,” says first author Jeffrey Lackner, PsyD, associate professor in the Department of Medicine, UB School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences, and director of its Behavioral Medicine Clinic.
“In some patients this assumption does not prove to be true,” he continues. “Regardless of whether patients received two or four sessions of behavioral treatment, a significant proportion rapidly achieved significant relief of severe IBS symptoms and maintained these gains for at least three months.”
Irritable bowel syndrome is a chronic, debilitating disorder affecting 25 million people in the U.S. – 14-24 percent of women and 5-19 percent of men. In the past, there had been no reliable, satisfactory medical treatment for the full range of IBS symptoms, which can cause severe physical and psychological distress and deprive sufferers of their quality of life.
Lackner is principal investigator on an $8.9 million, seven-year, multi-site clinical trial funded by the National Institute of Diabetes, Digestive and Kidney Diseases (NIDDK) to test the treatment, which proved effective during his pilot study. The UB trial is the largest IBS clinical trial conducted to date, and one of the largest behavioral trials without a drug component funded by the NIH.
The current study involved 71 participants from its UB site who were randomized to receive either four one-hour sessions with a behavioral therapist over 10 weeks, 10 one-hour sessions over 10 weeks or to a “wait” group, which served as a control.
Researchers were interested in knowing if patients who showed significant improvement soon after beginning treatment maintained that improvement at three months after the 10-week intervention, and if so, how these rapid responders were different from the non-rapid responders.
Lackner says they found a strong connection between participants’ beliefs about their IBS symptoms and their rapid response and maintenance of improvement.
“Rapid responders were more likely to attribute their symptoms to their own specific behavior, express more confidence in their ability to make specific behavior changes necessary to control IBS symptoms and have stronger motivation to participate in a self-management program,” says Lackner.
“One might assume that the therapist-directed, time-intensive and highly structured weekly cognitive behavior therapy would be more likely to promote a more rapid response. That turned out not to be the case.”
In addition, 92.5 percent of rapid responders showed an enduring benefit that lasted well over three months with little evidence of deterioration.
“This suggests that rapid response is a relatively robust, clinically meaningful and enduring clinical phenomenon,” says Lackner. “The enduring nature of the response to treatment argues against the idea that the results are due to placebo.”
He continues: “The study has implications for designing clinical trials that test the effectiveness of medical therapies. Generally speaking, the approach has been to test two treatments side by side. This horse race approach is useful, but may not provide information about the more pressing question of: which treatment works best for which patient?
“Our study suggests that what goes on during treatment may be more important to understanding the course of outcome than factors such as the severity of their illness, age, gender and education level. Generally speaking, these variables are not reliable predictors of outcome.”
Additional authors on the paper from UB are Gregory D. Gudleski, PhD, Susan S. Krasner, PhD, Catherine D. Powell and Leonard A. Katz, MD, and Laurie Keefer, PhD, from Northwestern University.
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Article Date: 13 May 2010 – 5:00 PDT
Nearly one-third of patients with irritable bowel syndrome (IBS) who underwent a novel behavior treatment developed by a University at Buffalo behavioral scientist achieved significant relief within four weeks of beginning treatment.
These patients, called “rapid responders” maintained their improvement at a three-month follow-up, despite reporting more severe IBS symptoms when they started the treatment.
Results also showed that the amount of “face time” spent with a therapist during the 10-week treatment regimen didn’t have an effect on rapid response.
The study is published in the current issue of the journal Clinical Gastroenterology and Hepatology.
“These results are important, because conventional wisdom states that benefit from behavioral treatments is tied to the amount of treatment patients receive,” says first author Jeffrey Lackner, PsyD, associate professor in the Department of Medicine, UB School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences, and director of its Behavioral Medicine Clinic.
“In some patients this assumption does not prove to be true,” he continues. “Regardless of whether patients received two or four sessions of behavioral treatment, a significant proportion rapidly achieved significant relief of severe IBS symptoms and maintained these gains for at least three months.”
Irritable bowel syndrome is a chronic, debilitating disorder affecting 25 million people in the U.S. – 14-24 percent of women and 5-19 percent of men. In the past, there had been no reliable, satisfactory medical treatment for the full range of IBS symptoms, which can cause severe physical and psychological distress and deprive sufferers of their quality of life.
Lackner is principal investigator on an $8.9 million, seven-year, multi-site clinical trial funded by the National Institute of Diabetes, Digestive and Kidney Diseases (NIDDK) to test the treatment, which proved effective during his pilot study. The UB trial is the largest IBS clinical trial conducted to date, and one of the largest behavioral trials without a drug component funded by the NIH.
The current study involved 71 participants from its UB site who were randomized to receive either four one-hour sessions with a behavioral therapist over 10 weeks, 10 one-hour sessions over 10 weeks or to a “wait” group, which served as a control.
Researchers were interested in knowing if patients who showed significant improvement soon after beginning treatment maintained that improvement at three months after the 10-week intervention, and if so, how these rapid responders were different from the non-rapid responders.
Lackner says they found a strong connection between participants’ beliefs about their IBS symptoms and their rapid response and maintenance of improvement.
“Rapid responders were more likely to attribute their symptoms to their own specific behavior, express more confidence in their ability to make specific behavior changes necessary to control IBS symptoms and have stronger motivation to participate in a self-management program,” says Lackner.
“One might assume that the therapist-directed, time-intensive and highly structured weekly cognitive behavior therapy would be more likely to promote a more rapid response. That turned out not to be the case.”
In addition, 92.5 percent of rapid responders showed an enduring benefit that lasted well over three months with little evidence of deterioration.
“This suggests that rapid response is a relatively robust, clinically meaningful and enduring clinical phenomenon,” says Lackner. “The enduring nature of the response to treatment argues against the idea that the results are due to placebo.”
He continues: “The study has implications for designing clinical trials that test the effectiveness of medical therapies. Generally speaking, the approach has been to test two treatments side by side. This horse race approach is useful, but may not provide information about the more pressing question of: which treatment works best for which patient?
“Our study suggests that what goes on during treatment may be more important to understanding the course of outcome than factors such as the severity of their illness, age, gender and education level. Generally speaking, these variables are not reliable predictors of outcome.”
Additional authors on the paper from UB are Gregory D. Gudleski, PhD, Susan S. Krasner, PhD, Catherine D. Powell and Leonard A. Katz, MD, and Laurie Keefer, PhD, from Northwestern University.
 
Article Date: 13 May 2010 – 1:00 PDT
How adults approach children aged 3 to 6 years during conversations has a major influence on their language acquisition. Those who address children as fully-fledged conversation partners lay an early basis for the development of ‘academic language’, says Dutch researcher Lotte Henrichs.
Children at a primary school need a certain type of language proficiency: academic language. Academic language is not an independent, new language, but is the language that teachers use and expect from the pupils. It enables children to understand instructions and to demonstrate their knowledge in an efficient manner. Academic language is characterised by difficult, abstract words and complex sentence structures. The language often contains a lot of clauses and conjunctions and due to the methods of argument and analysis it has a scientific appearance.
Parents make the difference
Henrichs demonstrated that children are already confronted with academic language in the nursery school. They already hear a lot academic language from the teacher and are often expected to use academic language themselves. The extent to which academic language is used at home was found to differ strongly between families. An essential aspect is how parents approach their children during conversations. If children are given the opportunity to make meaningful contributions to conversations, they often use characteristics of academic language proficiency naturally. In addition to this, the knowledge of academic language depends on the extent to which parents read to their children, tell them stories and hold conversations about interesting subjects.
Lotte Henrichs investigated how very young children in particular acquire this academic language proficiency and the role played by child raisers and schools in this process. Within the large research programme that Henrichs carried out her research in, 150 children aged 3 to 6 years were followed for a period of three years. All of the children lived in the Netherlands and came from Turkish, Moroccan-Berber and Dutch families. From all these participants, a subgroup of 25 Dutch families were involved in the in-depth study of Henrichs.
Source: NWO (Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research)
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Article Date: 13 May 2010 – 1:00 PDT
How adults approach children aged 3 to 6 years during conversations has a major influence on their language acquisition. Those who address children as fully-fledged conversation partners lay an early basis for the development of ‘academic language’, says Dutch researcher Lotte Henrichs.
Children at a primary school need a certain type of language proficiency: academic language. Academic language is not an independent, new language, but is the language that teachers use and expect from the pupils. It enables children to understand instructions and to demonstrate their knowledge in an efficient manner. Academic language is characterised by difficult, abstract words and complex sentence structures. The language often contains a lot of clauses and conjunctions and due to the methods of argument and analysis it has a scientific appearance.
Parents make the difference
Henrichs demonstrated that children are already confronted with academic language in the nursery school. They already hear a lot academic language from the teacher and are often expected to use academic language themselves. The extent to which academic language is used at home was found to differ strongly between families. An essential aspect is how parents approach their children during conversations. If children are given the opportunity to make meaningful contributions to conversations, they often use characteristics of academic language proficiency naturally. In addition to this, the knowledge of academic language depends on the extent to which parents read to their children, tell them stories and hold conversations about interesting subjects.
Lotte Henrichs investigated how very young children in particular acquire this academic language proficiency and the role played by child raisers and schools in this process. Within the large research programme that Henrichs carried out her research in, 150 children aged 3 to 6 years were followed for a period of three years. All of the children lived in the Netherlands and came from Turkish, Moroccan-Berber and Dutch families. From all these participants, a subgroup of 25 Dutch families were involved in the in-depth study of Henrichs.
Source: NWO (Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research)
 
12 May 2010 by Ewen Callaway
People with autism seem to have normal “mirror” neurons after all. A popular theory has it that these neurons – brain cells that fire both when you perform an action and when you watch someone else doing the same thing – don’t work properly in people with autism. Now it looks as though that isn’t so.
The idea was that malfunctioning mirror neurons underlie the difficulties that people with autism have in interpreting the intentions of others. It seemed to be backed up by studies in which the brain activity of normal and autistic people was measured while they watched and performed simple actions, such as hand movements. In many, but not all of these studies, brain areas rich with mirror neurons proved less active in the people with autism.
But Ilan Dinstein, a neuroscientist at the Weizmann Institute in Rehovot, Israel, says other differences besides faulty mirror neurons could explain these results. For instance, if it turns out that people with autism imitate or detect hand movements more slowly than others, brain scans could mistake this delay for dysfunction in mirror neurons, he says.
Read in Full:Â http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn18837-mirror-neurons-seen-behaving-normally-in-autism.html?DCMP=OTC-rss&nsref=online-news