"If you have space in your library for only one book on visual supports, make it Visual Supports for People with Autism. Marlene J. Cohen, EdD, BCBA, and Donna L. Sloan, MA, BCBA, have written a reader-friendly text that reviews numerous visual strategies.
In addition to discussing the strategies, Dr. Cohen and Sloan have included a photo or drawing with each strategy, helping to put visual supports to work for the reader. The authors draw on their considerable experience working with adolescents and adults on the autism spectrum at the Douglass Developmental Disabilities Center in New Brunswick, NJ.
They begin explaining the value of visual supports and the ones that are commonly used. Compelling motivations for using visual strategies are outlined in the beginning chapters. The next six chapters cite the supports that are most effective for specific goals and help the reader choose the best strategies to use with specific clients.
The second chapter looks at supports for language development. It presents many of the better known devices, such as picture cues and graphic organizers, as well as some lesser known strategies like caterpillar organizers and Thinking Stories.
Chapter 4 outlines visual supports to increase memory and reviews the various steps used to get information into long-term memory. The next chapter discusses supports for temporal sequential skills, such as time organization, math and multi-step tasks.
Chapter 6 tackles attending skills. Attending is a problem for most people on the autism spectrum, and the authors’ suggestions are functional and effective.
The final chapter discusses how and when to fade the various visual supports. This is a significant step, which is missing in many books on visual supports.
All of the visual supports noted in the book are low-tech and most can be made with materials found in the home or classroom. Clear, concise writing and abundant illustrations make this an ideal book for families, teachers, therapists, and anyone else working with people with autism or other developmental delays and those with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder."
-ADVANCE for Speech-Language Pathologists & Audiologists, January 21, 2008
"Visual supports is a formal term for referring to those tricks and methods that help us in our daily routines, e.g., to-do lists, maps, calendars, and highlighting text. For those with autism spectrum disorders, visual supports can aid in compensating for weaknesses with processing auditory input, particularly speech. Cohen and Sloan, both certified behavior analysts with the Douglass Developmental Disabilities Center at Rutgers University, write clearly and base their work on such strong sources as David Sousa's How the Brain Learns and the works of Mel Levine. The more than 140 illustrations and photographs provide inspiration for how to 'draw on your child's strengths to support areas of weakness,' which should be a goal for all educators and parents.
Adding to the book's many practical suggestions are an informative chapter on how to fade visual supports when appropriate and an extensive list of references and recommended reading. Although this guide is written for parents and teachers and none of the supports is difficult or expensive to create, it will probably be used mainly as a reference by teachers. Recommended for academic libraries and public libraries with autism collections."
-Library Journal, April 15, 2007
