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In my last post I talked about the importance of teaching attention for a student to attend to the instructor before delivering instruction.  However, over time, how I teach this skill has changed significantly.  We don’t need to teach eye contact in autism. And many individuals with ASD have indicated that the process to do it was traumatizing. Here’s what I focus on instead.

A History Lesson on Teaching Attention Skills in Autism

In the “old” days, back when many of you were playing school in your backyard, we used to teach attention by focusing on eye contact in autism using a shaping protocol.  The instruction we used was typically to tell the learner to “Look at me.”  We then reinforced increasing lengths of eye contact–2 seconds, 5 seconds, etc.  If the student didn’t look at us, we turned his/her heads toward us and sometimes tried to “capture” his or her eye contact by shading their eyes so that other distractions were removed.  I have to say, that part never really worked for me.

Since I originally wrote this post, there has been a huge contribution to the field from autism self-advocates who have shared their experiences in ABA. We need to learn from these experiences and focus on what works and what makes sense. Moreover, even before self-advocates were talking about this issue, many of us in the field were already making a shift.

The Realities of Teaching Eye Contact in Autism Vs. Gaining Attention

Guess what, you can’t actually MAKE someone make eye contact in autism or in anyone. Even if you move someone to look in your direction, it doesn’t mean his eyes will meet yours.  In addition, there are a number of adults with ASD (self-advocates) who talk about how terrorizing and difficult this was for them.

In addition, let’s think about what it means to teach someone to make eye contact for up to 10 seconds.  When you spend a lot of time teaching eye contact, you (or at least I) spent a lot of time realizing that I didn’t make a lot of eye contact.  

Now, I’m not a terribly outgoing person, but I would say I do OK socially.  However, even in a conversation, people don’t make steady eye contact. They look at you and look away and then look back.  So not only was this not terribly effective, but we were teaching the wrong skill.  If someone stares at you, you probably don’t engage with them–unless you are in love with them…and that’s another story (and another skill set).

My Personal Lesson with “Look at me”

But, here’s a big reason I stopped using “look at me” as a direction more than a decade ago.  I was working with a kindergartener who was spending most of his day in a general education kindergarten classroom with pull out 1-1 discrete trials as the key element of his instruction.  I was overseeing the program which included writing the discrete trial programs, analyzing data, training staff, and helping the staff to include him in a functional and meaningful way in kindergarten.  

One day, I was watching him in the class and realized that the teacher was calling his name after he didn’t follow a direction she gave to the class to line up.  It looked kind of like this.  

• She gave a direction to the class.  
• This kid didn’t follow it, while the rest of the class did.  
• She called his name and gave the direction.  
• He didn’t respond.  
• She usually repeated it a couple of times.  
• Then she would walk up to him and say, “Look at me” and wait for him to attend.  
• Then she would give the direction and he would follow it immediately.  
• And the little voice inside my head said, “DUH…we’ve been teaching it wrong.”

The Realities of Teaching Attention in the Real Classroom

Because here is what happens in most situations.  People only say “Look at me” when you aren’t paying attention and aren’t doing what you are supposed to do.  The first thing most teachers say when you don’t follow the class direction (a skill we also need to teach) is the child’s name.  Essentially we were teaching kids to only respond to directions when their teacher / parent / caregiver is really frustrated because they aren’t following directions.

Similarly, teachers don’t expect extended eye contact when they call on students. They just want some sign that the students are attending or that they, the teacher, were heard. We don’t need to teach our students to stare into people’s eyes to help them learn to to become better socializers. Instead, we need to teach them ways to indicate that they ARE attending.

SO WHAT SHOULD WE DO INSTEAD?

• One approach is to focus on teaching them to respond to their names.  But those responses don’t have to be direct eye contact. It can be a glance, a hand gesture or some other signal to let the listener know they have been heard.
• Teach him that when he hears his name (remember, following group directions is a different skill so we aren’t there yet) he looks up at the speaker or gives some other type of signal to acknowledge the direction. He doesn’t need to make eye contact to do this.
• Instead of using a shaping program that increases the length of eye contact, focus on a shaping program that increases the distance from which you can call his name and have him respond (at the desk, in a group, across the room, down the hall, etc.).  When he can do the first we move to the next one as the program.  (I’ll talk more about shaping and programs later in the series).

So, let’s not teach staring as a skill and let’s not traumatize instead of teach. Our teaching has progressed beyond that.  Also, when you develop any type of program, think about how it plays out in the “real world” that the person is living in and the impact it has on the learner.  How do people talk, what do they say, and what behaviors do they really expect?