AP21228

Prompt: Guest Speaker Report

Mrs. Cheryl Bell-Abbott, teacher of autistic students in Clay County, came into class to discuss how components of psychology are applicable to her occupation. Mrs. Bell-Abbott stated that autism was a neurological disorder. She also stated that in order to be diagnosed with autism, the individual must have impairments in three areas: socialization, communication, and they must exhibit stereotypical behaviors (Bell-Abbott). Impairments in social skills include lack of eye contact while talking to someone and not interacting with other children while on the playground (Bell-Abbott). Regarding communication impairments, autistic people range from verbal to non-verbal. Those who are verbal, like someone who has Asperger’s Syndrome, lack in the area of pragmatics - the patterns of intonation and social roles associated with language, as well as figurative language. An example of a stereotypical behavior is inattentional blindness, the phenomenon in which we shift our focus from one object to another and then fail to notice changes in objects to which we are not directly paying attention (Wood, 88). Autistic children may direct their focus to one aspect of an object, disregarding the surrounding world. This connects to the video in which fifty percent of viewers don’t notice a man in a gorilla costume walk across the screen because they are too focused on watching people pass a ball. In her classroom, Mrs. Bell-Abbott applies elements of behaviorism, the psychological school that views observable, measurable behavior as the appropriate subject matter for psychology (Wood, 8). She asses what behavior a student is exhibiting as either attention-seeking or escape-seeking, and attempts to curb that behavior by using positive reinforcement. A token economy, a technique that motivates and rewards appropriate behavior with reinforcers is also used in her classroom. Her actions relate to ground-breaking behaviorist experiments like the Little Albert Experiment and Pavlov’s experiments.

References: Bell-Abbott, Cheryl. General Psychology. Saint John’s River State College, Orange Park. 17 Jul. 2014. Guest Speaker.

Wood, Samuel E., Ellen R. Green. Wood, and Denise Roberts. Boyd. //Mastering the World of Psychology //. Fourth ed. Boston: Pearson/Allyn and Bacon, 2011. Print.

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