Affective learning interactions and autistic children

Autism is a developmental disorder of relating and communicating. Autistic children find it difficult to relate to others, assess other people's perspectives and participate in reciprocal chains of communication. According to a hypothesis by child psychiatrist Stanley I. Greenspan, called the Affect Diathesis hypothesis, affective/emotion-ruled interactions are imperative to the development of intelligence and social skills in a human being.

When a child with autism is unable to relate to and communicate with others, they miss out on the essential and boundless learning opportunities that emotionally meaningful interactions offer children. Let us take a look at the various areas of development built on the foundation of emotionally meaningful or affect-directed social interactions.

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  Causal logical thinking and a sense of self
  

When a baby boy gurgles or rattles a toy and gets a response from his caregivers, he begins to grasp the concept of causality. He starts understanding how performing specific actions can cause certain changes in the world around him.

The infant also begins to differentiate themselves from the world around them and starts gaining a concrete sense of self.

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  Understanding abstract ideas
  

We gain an understanding of most abstract concepts through relevant interactive experiences. As a child with autism often shuts down from the world due to their inability to foster engagement with their environment and the people within it, they miss out on essential affective interactions that could teach them several important concepts and ideas.

For instance, to understand concepts such as fairness and justice, the child would need to have had relevant social experiences. Without these experiences, it would be difficult to glean the meaning of these concepts for an autistic child.

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  Learning how to modulate one's feelings through changing one's behavior
  

Children with autism often feel anxious because of their inability to cope with an overwhelming environment and the distressing emotions that may result from it. Typically, children learn the art of modulating their emotions through social interactions. For example, when a child feels anxious, they may learn to convey their feelings to their teacher at school or their parents. When the child would have bawled during the first few episodes of anxiety and been soothed by a caregiver, they would have arrived at the conclusion that they can use the help of an adult to regulate their emotions.

As children with autism are unable to participate in emotionally-driven social interactions, they could feel like they are left to their own resources. This could cause an incomprehensibly high amount of distress and lead to meltdowns.

Certain special ed schools in NYC employ curriculums centered around the significance of fostering one-on-one affective interactions with autistic children, in order to enable them to learn the various key skills made possible by such interactions. These NYC special ed schools employ professional staff that are well-trained to engage children in meaningful social interactions by entering their "personal" world and gently pulling the children back into a shared world full of learning opportunities.To know more about special ed schools in NYC visit: www.rebeccaschool.org/