Fluency

One of the biggest obstacles that the treatment of autism and related developmental disorders faces is the loss of previously mastered skills. Fluency is designed to maintain and strengthen skills that the child has learned in the past. Fluency poses new challenges for the student in that the child may be asked to demonstrate skills while distractions are present. The treatment for autism also requires the student to generalize the skills in a number of different settings. Speed and accuracy are also factored into the fluency treatment for autism as well. Time limits are introduced into tasks. For example, a child may be prompted to identify as many numbers as he can within a 30 second time frame. Fluency is a great approach to generalizing mastered skills. It can also be used to help the child understand that "cat" refers to more than just one specific animal. The child may be encouraged to identify various images of cats, three dimensional cats, cartoon cats and live pets during the process.