Why are imagination and flexible thinking important?
One of the core differences experienced by people with autism is in their ability to utilise flexible thinking and use their imagination effectively. Today I am going to look at why that can be the cause of some difficulties and what we can do to help.
Creativity
When we think of imagination, the first ideas that come to mind are around creativity and storytelling. An early sign of autism in younger children may be a lack of imaginative play, such as acting out scenarios or making up games with toys. Many young children with autism will prefer to explore toys in a sensory manner, such as spinning the wheels on toy cars or lining them up, rather than pushing them around a track. Some young people will always find it difficult to create something entirely from their imagination and may struggle with story writing or roleplay. However, this is not true for all people on the spectrum. Many have fabulous imaginations and for some the issue is more around understanding the difference between real life and fantasy.
Prediction
There are actually a number of other things we use our imagination for in day-to-day life. One of these is to us to use our past experiences to predict what something is going to be like in the future. For instance, if I get invited to a party I might very quickly, even subconsciously refer back to previous parties I have been to, so that I can visualise what this one may entail; a cake, some presents, maybe music and dancing. That takes away the anxiety of uncertainty and makes me feel more confident about knowing what to expect. Young people with autism find this very difficult and may not be able to think in this way, meaning that fairly routine experiences can still cause the anxiety associated with something new and different.
Empathy
In order to really empathise with another person, we need to be able to imagine what things look like from their perspective. This is an area where lots of our young people are faced with confusion. It may be due to weak Theory of Mind (I will be covering that in another blog), but it may come down to difficulties in visualising that perspective and being able to think flexibly enough to compare that view with their own.
Generalisation
Young people with ASD often have strong skills of rote learning facts and information. However, they can struggle to use that knowledge in a flexible way and apply it in a range of contexts. For instance a child may be able to do a maths question when it is presented in a certain way but change the layout and they no longer know how to add up. They may have skills that they have learnt in specific places, or with particular people and then struggle to transfer these to a different context.
Categorisation
In order to speed up our experience of the world, our minds tend to put things into categories. Depending on the context, you use a variable level of detail. A dog might be an ‘Alsatian’ when I am describing it missing, a ‘dog’ if I am booking into the vets, or an ‘pet’ if I am choosing which isle to look for in the supermarket when buying my dog food. Using categories takes a certain about of visualisation and flexible thinking than can pose a challenge for young people with autism. They may not be able to use categories in this way, which makes processing information take a lot longer, as everything could be moving through their thoughts in its most complex level of detail. I have experiences in which young people have appeared very pedantic, or stubborn in their interpretation of instructions, due to their confusion being misinterpreted by the adults around them. For example, refusing to put their body warmer on their coat-peg, as it is not a ‘coat’. These young people can end up getting told off, when they really have no idea why, as they were not using the same category as their neurotypical peers. It can add an extra level of challenge when introducing new topic vocabulary, or using communication aids in which vocabulary is sorted into word groups like colours, foods, numbers etc.. As with generalisation, in can mean that our young people can sometimes learn things in one fixed context, but be unable to use that knowledge flexibility. Another example would be the child who associates the word ‘cartoon’ with their one particular favourite cartoon and then gets upset if you promise to watch a cartoon, but put something different on!
Single focused attention
Young people with Autism tend to have single focused attention. This can be a strength, as they can advance their skills very quickly in the things that they are particularly focused on; special interests. On the other hand it can pose a challenge when children struggle to switch their attention to an adult-led task.
Changing your mind
A lack of mental flexibility means that young people with autism can be rigid thinkers. They might develop ‘fixed meanings’ for what a certain word of phrase means, such as the child who believes ‘all together’ is a maths phase and gets upset when this is an instruction during singing. They might develop fixed routines and struggle with timetable or room changes. It takes a certain amount of mental flexibility to change your mind on something and accept a new idea. Some young people with autism can appear stubborn, when really the issue is more that they lack the flexibility to give up their chosen course of action to follow yours!
Top ten tips to support imagination and flexibility
- Support imaginative play and storytelling with visual prompts, story dice, modelling or giving a basic story for a young person to expand upon or alter.
- Fantasy and reality sorting activities; sorting real people from fictional people, fictional places, real objects from fictional objects (such as Doctor Who’s sonic Screw driver Vs a real screw driver!) and sorting thoughts/ideas and real events that have happened.
- Create links from the past to the present and future, to help young people to develop the skill of predicting. This could be done through Social Stories (along the lines of …It was like X last time, so this time it will be like X again), praise scrapbooks, timelines and visual timetables
- Comic Strip Conversations can be used to teach young people about what might be in another person’s thought bubble and how we can make plausible guesses by looking at contextual clues. Help sheet here: https://www.freeoutreach.org.uk/docs/New_PDF_helpsheets/FAQ_-_Comic_Strips.pdf
- Find opportunities to practice the same skills in a variety of contexts. In maths this might include doing the same exercise with cubes, then Dienes, then a number square, then place value cards, then Numicon etc.. It might involve doing some outdoor learning, some reading different media, using different recording methods or practicing skills with different adults around the school. Sometimes the best curriculum for pupils with autism goes sideways before it can go forwards. The same goes for therapies. The best speech and language interventions are integrated into the classroom, the playground, the lunch hall and everywhere!
- Use lots of sorting and classifying activities, especially when introducing new topic vocabulary. Word mats and word ‘families’ can be helpful, such as a collection of all the words that mean addition. Colourful Semantics is a useful way to start classifying new words. Video here: https://freemantlesoutreach.org.uk/Colourful-Semantics/
- Use special interests to get young people engaged in learning and as a high-confidence activities for a child who doubts their own abilities and doesn’t wat to take risks in their work. Help sheet here: https://freemantlesoutreach.org.uk/docs/New_PDF_helpsheets/Motivation__Using_a_Special_Interest_.pdf
- Practice change in a safe, controlled environment, so that ‘real’ changes are not such a shock and not seen as a negative. Use an ‘oops’ card as a signal for change.
- Use adult modelling to show strategies for coping with change and ‘think out loud’ about the process we go through when we see something unexpected and need to process it. Emphasise that feeling worried is ok and show the strategies that can help, such as asking for help, deep breaths or taking a break.
- Before any of this can happen, build relationships and build trust (perhaps this should have been number one!) We are going to be asking our young people to do things that make them feel uncomfortable and to challenge their fixed mind set. They will not be able to do that if they don’t have good relationships with the adults around them.