Kate Ripley - Helping Students on the Autism Spectrum Get the Best Out of College: A Guide for Further Education Professionals

Helping Students
on the Autism
Spectrum Get
the Best Out of
College

A Guide for Further
Education Professionals

Kate Ripley and
Dr Rebecca Murphy

This book is for the staff in colleges of further education who are working with students who are on the autism spectrum. In 2017, there were 712,000 young people between 16 and 18 years studying at colleges of further education with an additional 77,500 combining an apprenticeship with attendance at college (Association of Colleges 2017). The National Autistic Society estimates that one in 100 young people have an autistic condition, which suggests that most colleges will be supporting some students who are on the autism spectrum. The book offers guidance about planning the transition to college and the ways in which an autistic condition may affect a students access to learning and social inclusion.

For each chapter, there is a parallel chapter in the student workbook that directly addresses the students needs. The student workbook includes exercises to guide their planning and approach to learning and to support their social inclusion.

Until the recent advances in neuroscience, it was widely believed that most brain development took place in the early years. Give me a child until he is seven and I will show you the man is the well-known Aristotle quote. We now know that important changes take place in the brain throughout adolescence and early adulthood. This is particularly true for the pre-frontal cortex, which is involved in decision making, planning, self-regulation, social interactions and self-awareness. Other areas also develop but to a lesser extent:

the temporal cortex language, memory and social understanding

the parietal cortex multisensory processing and spatial navigation.

Many of the functions that are developing and changing are considered to be problematic for students on the autism spectrum. Blakemore (2018) emphasizes the importance of late adolescence as a window of opportunity for educational intervention. Her research shows that certain cognitive skills such as non-verbal reasoning are best learned in late adolescence. Although there has been limited research specifically targeted at the development of the adolescent brain in the autistic population, adolescence is perceived as a time for all adolescents to reinvent themselves (Blakemore 2018).

The frontal cortex is the last part of the brain to mature in terms of the number of synapses, (Sapolsky 2017). The process is not usually complete until the mid-twenties. Emotions and hormones are rampant during adolescence while the control system (the frontal cortex) is still wiring. A lot of neural connections are pruned, leaving only those that are the most useful. Getting rid of redundancy helps the frontal cortex to act more efficiently so we can exercise more control over our actions. There is some evidence that early neural pruning around seven is less efficient among children with autism, but there has not yet been parallel research for the adolescent stage.

The changes that take place in the brain during adolescence and early adulthood open up opportunities for students to develop their self-regulation skills, social skills and organizational skills. The heartfelt Hes been doing social skills for years and I cant see any difference might just be about to change, if the student is given appropriate support.

The way in which the developing frontal cortex can override an initial, reactive, emotional response is illustrated in . The reactive response becomes a self-regulated response that is under conscious control.

Changes in the frontal cortex can have practical implications for a student on the autism spectrum:

Students may have an excellent memory for facts, particularly those that are linked to a topic that they find interesting. Changes in the frontal cortex support the development of working memory: the ability to combine information from different sources in order to solve problems. Working memory is a better predictor of academic success than IQ (intelligence quotient) and there is evidence that it can be trained further (Alloway and Alloway 2010).

Students may follow rules that they have been taught, regardless of the context. It may not always be appropriate to follow a rule; for example, the green light is showing on the crossing but there is a speeding ambulance approaching with the blue light flashing. Where would a white lie fit in? A maturing frontal cortex makes it possible to think of rules in a more flexible way there may even be a more efficient way to do a calculation.

The ability to plan ahead and organize will become more established with appropriate support.

Some students will have found it hard to regulate their attention focus. This might involve:

engaging attention, particularly for tasks that are of low interest

disengaging from a task which is unfinished

switching between tasks.

The developing frontal cortex will support the conscious control of attention.

Many students on the autism spectrum will adhere to rigid routines and may have limits on the foods or clothing that they will tolerate. In adolescence, the limbic system, which is associated with reward, often responds to risk taking before the frontal cortex can take over conscious control. Some students on the autism spectrum may be more willing to try new experiences, including foods during adolescence. The role of the limbic system also means that reward-based management systems, rather than punishment, are most effective at this developmental stage (Blakemore 2018). However, the immediacy and timing of the reward are important.

One of the core features of autism has been explained in terms of a limited Theory of Mind. This is described as the ability to see situations from the perspective of another person. The ability to interpret social cues and thereby respond more appropriately to social situations may improve as the frontal cortex develops. There is, therefore, an opportunity to revisit some of the social skills programmes that the students have probably experienced at school but which appeared to have had little impact on their behaviour at the time.

Autism has traditionally been perceived as a condition that mostly affects males. The Extreme Male Brain theory of autism (Baron-Cohen 2002) links the condition to hormonal influences. The diagnostic criteria which are used to identify autism ( International Classification of Diseases 11th Edition (ICD-II) and the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual 5th Edition (DSM-5)) are biased towards the manifestation in males. Males often bring themselves to attention because they are more likely to use physical means to express themselves when they are unhappy, while girls implode emotionally (Wild 2015).

There has been more recent understanding of how autism manifests itself in girls, but still only 20 per cent are diagnosed before the age of 11, compared with 50 per cent of boys. Girls on the autism spectrum often reach a crisis point in early adolescence (1314 years) and they may become school refusers. Girls are frequently referred to the Child and Adolescent Mental Health Service (CAMHS) for conditions such as obsessive compulsive disorder, selective mutism, anxiety, depression and self-harm. One hospital found that 23 per cent of its admissions for anorexia met the criteria for autism spectrum condition/disorder (ASD) (Happe, cited in The Guardian 15/09/2018).