Stressors are those things that push the child from optimal arousal with high levels of performance and learning to distress and decreasing performance. Optimal arousal is the state in which the child’s alertness and focus are such that learning is more effective and efficient. Distress is the state at which the child becomes over-stimulated and/or overwhelmed.
For people with Introversion-Sensing-Thinking-Judging (ISTJ) preferences, like children with autism, stressors tend to be those things that violate their need for clarity, precision, planfulness, logical decision-making and time to warm up to a situation. Strikingly, the stressors Quenk found for ISTJs parallel what I have observed repeatedly in children with autism.
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The most important way to begin to understand a child with autism is to observe him. This should always be your first step. Watching him in everyday life helps you see how he tries to understand and make sense of the world, events and
people around him.
Before you start, set aside all information you may have heard or read about the child. Do not think about him in terms of impairments or delays. Think about him in terms of how he may be trying to make sense of his world and make it more tolerable.
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Lets find out the relation between learning preferences with Introversion-Sensing-Thinking-Judging (ISTJ) type and
the key characteristics of autism. Examination of each preference is presented below and examples within the realm of autism will be highlighted.
A person with an Introversion preference, as an energy source:
• is slow to warm up to new settings, people, information, and activities
• feels more comfortable receiving input than initiating contact and is generally selective about sharing thoughts Read the rest of this entry »
As I promised in earlier articles, lets continue with the rest of learner preferences, which is decision making.
Decision making is set of preferences dealing with how the way people interact and make some decision with the information they gather previously.
Thinking
The learner with a Thinking preference values logic, fairness and truthfulness for making decisions. He is naturally quite brief, businesslike and to the point. The Thinker makes decisions based on what is fair and truthful. Read the rest of this entry »