Practical Strategies to Encourage Autistic Children’s Language

Brittany Koegel from the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at Stanford University School of Medicine will present Practical Strategies to Encourage Autistic Children’s Language as part of Lehigh University Autism Services' Community Learning Series. Koegel's presentation will focus on research-supported strategies that have been shown to significantly increase child engagement in learning, increasing the speed of new skill acquisition. She will cover the concepts of child choice, task variation, interspersal of maintenance and acquisition tasks, natural reinforcers, and reinforcing attempts. This lecture will present specific procedures for teaching verbal initiations to children on the autism spectrum. A number of video clips will be used to demonstrate these motivational components. Research shows that child initiations are critical for more positive long-term outcomes in autistic children. Koegel’s lecture will cover positive long-term social and communicative outcomes of this approach. The event will be presented on Zoom and is open to the public. To register, please visit https://bit.ly/45Z7o71