Prioritizing+Therapies

//**Work in progress (started Jan 01, 2012):**This page is dedicated to the overriding approach I personally use to understand autism in myself and others. It is currently a work in progress and will change quite a bit over the first quarter of this new year// //(2012)////. It is my hope that people will gain insights from this work that help them to sift the grain and prioritize treatments in themselves and the ASD people they care for. This page works hand-in-hand with the Hierarchy of ASD Needs page. Addressing health issues almost always has the highest priority and return on investment (low risk/high benefit).//

The **ASD Cognitive Profile model** encompasses what I believe to be the important cognitive pieces of the ASD person to focus on when establishing cognitive services/treatments and priorities of these treatments. In this model, note that "//**Cognitive Capacity**//" affects all the others and is described in more detail under this chart. This ASD profile of the cognitive pieces gives a starting point for parents, caregivers and people affected by ASD to wade through the volumes of information in an attempt to sort the data into relevant blocks.
 * //ASD Congitive Profile://**



This cognitive capacity is largely defined a birth and is defined as simply the amount of space that a person has for cognitive processing. Shutdowns and meltdowns occur when the information exceeds the cognitive capacity. When a person enters a situation (room, event, conversation, etc.), they engage a certain amount of this capacity to absorb the situation and leave a certain amount free to process new data. This free space that exists in this total cognitive area at any given time is called //**Working Cognitive Capacity**//.
 * Cognitive Capacity:**

It looks something like this...



To be continued...

Resources [|Cognitive theories of autism] [|Study linking comorbids to higher rate of symptoms, life failures]