COUNSELING ADULTS WITH ASPERGER‟S - School of Health ...

Counseling Asperger‟s 40
The second criterion for Asperger‟s is restricted and repetitive interests. Individuals with
Asperger‟s appreciate routine and predictable activities. Situations in which individuals on the
autism spectrum were said to show an insistence on sameness and/or resistance to change are
(Green et al., 2006, p. 231):
1. A preferred item is unavailable or may have been broken, moved, or misplaced
2. A desirable event or activity is interrupted, cancelled, or delayed
3. The person is subjected to unexpected sensory stimulation
4. The person fails a task
5. A task is left unfinished
It is clear how this kind of inflexibility could cause friction at school or on the job,
however, there is a dearth of information on interventions to help facilitate flexibility. The
clearest way to support someone who is in flexible in any of the above areas is to do as much as
possible to modify the environment to reduce the likelihood of items being misplaced or sudden
sensory input. Other strategies include providing external structure, organization, and stability,
provide predictable and safe environments, educate peers, professors, and supervisors, use
positive reinforcements to widen the range of interests, and teach stress coping skills (Williams
1995). It is also important for counselors to know that flexibility is a weakness of individuals
with Asperger‟s, and placement in a job that requires novel problem solving skills, unpredictable
day formats, or generation of innovative ideas, is going to be difficult to impossible.
Central Coherence
Individuals with Asperger‟s have been described as having weak central coherence—
difficulty drawing together diverse information in context (Frith & Happe, 1994). Unlike neuro-
typical individuals who tend to pull information together in an effort to gather a higher meaning,