Visual Supports

Visual Learners

Students with ASD are stronger visual learners compared to their typically developing peers, due to strengths in visual processing (Flannery & Wisner-Carlson, 2020). Teachers can provide visual aids, supports, schedules to make the classroom a more inclusive environment.

Benefits of visual schedules and supports:

Takes away some of the chaos of the environment
Helps student with ASD understand and retain verbal and sequential information
Provides visual cues to organize tasks
Develops independent skills
Grows tolerance and flexibility in less predictable environments
Is a preventative practice
Set expectations
Explains routines or schedules
Supports classroom management
Address challenging behaviors
Supports the development of skills
Increases successful transition between activities
Positive behavior intervention used easily in home and the classroom settings
Can be used for functional communication purposes
Increases social understanding
Used for Positive Behavior Intervention and Supports- (PBIS)

(Flannery & Wisner-Carlson, 2020; Kidder &McDonnell, 2017)

Kidder & McDonnell (2017) state that the ultimate purpose of visual schedules and supports is to generalize skill development and fade out usage over time. As a student starts building skills, start fading out the level of visual support used. Eventually they should be replaced with more complex elements and a decrease of frequency of prompting . As a student is able to generalize the skill being developed, their visual support should be modified or altered (2017).

Bryan & Gast state visual supports are necessary for learners with ASD because they do not automatically discriminate the cues in their environment, which impacts their abilty to function independently (2000). Visual supports are a tool they can learn to use to become more independent in their social environments.

The following are types of visual aids that can be utilized in the classroom. Kidder & McDonnell (2017) discuss how these types of support can be utilized to target a variety of skills such as: