Brightening the lives of people with autism.

Sarah Corrigan, Physical Therapist

Physical therapy in the school setting focuses on teaching the skills necessary for developing age appropriate gross motor skills and helping to generalize these skills across a variety of settings.  There are many therapeutic techniques that have been found to be successful in teaching these skills.  Video modeling is one of those techniques that have been used successfully to teach many basic gross motor movement sequences as well as many exercises to improve overall endurance.  It can be used for simple movements such as standing on one foot, throwing a ball and jumping over an obstacle as well as for more complex movement sequences such as jumping jacks, skipping, walking up and down stairs and various yoga poses.

Research has shown that video modeling results in more rapid acquisition of skills as well as higher levels of generalization.  During video modeling, an action is performed by the model, the student views that model on the TV or computer screen, and the student then imitates the action of the model. Video modeling allows the therapist to teach a skill without direct physical prompts and the verbal prompts can be embedded into the video clip, making it easier to fade than when provided by a teacher.

Think you might want to try this at home?  Make a simple video of an activity you want your child to do at home.  Use a plain background to minimize visual distractions, use limited verbal directions, demonstrate the skill at a slow pace and keep it short.  Try using multiple repetitions of the same movement in order to allow your child time to process the action and motor plan the movement necessary to complete action.