[blockquote align=””]
Individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) sometimes acquire a new behavior or skill only in a specific context, but they have difficulty transferring that learned skill or information to a new context.
For example, children with autism can be taught what a dog is by showing them a picture of a dog and repeating the word “dog” over and over. But, when they are then taught what a cat is or even shown another type of dog, the previous knowledge does not transfer, and they have to learn this information from scratch.
A new study published in Nature Neuroscience shows that training individuals with ASD to acquire new information by repeating the information actually harms their ability to apply that learned knowledge to other situations. This finding, by an international research team, challenges the popular educational approaches designed for ASD individuals that focus on repetition and drills.
[/blockquote]
[button style=”arrow-right” title=”Read the full story here” url=”http://www.cmu.edu/news/stories/archives/2015/october/repetition-and-autism.html”]
