Johnny is an eight-year-old boy who was diagnosed with autism at the age of two. His communication skills are minimal. In order to develop his vocabulary, a picture exchange system (PECS) was implemented. Because Johnny has difficulty understanding abstract pictures, concrete pictures were needed. We used a digital camera to take pictures of items, thereby making it easier for Johnny to understand and discriminate between pictures. Once he has achieved an acceptable level of success with the concrete pictures, he will be graduated to using abstract pictures.

Dennis is a four-year-old boy who was diagnosed with autism within the last two years. His family was very isolated due to his inappropriate behavior in public that included tantruming and screaming when directed to sit down in restaurants and other outside settings. He didn’t understand the social cues of sitting for extended periods of time (exceeding 1-2 minutes on average). Because many children with autism are visual learners, a visual system was necessary to work with him on understanding time and waiting patiently for reinforcers. We were able to use the visual timer to work with him on increasing the amount of time he was able to sit in one place from 2-minute-minimum to generalizing across settings above 45-minute-maximum in a restaurant with appropriate and well-timed reinforcers.