By Tahirh Bushey
M.A.C.C.C. Speech and Language Pathologist
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Set Shifting
One reason that it is so hard for a child with ASD to play is that the child has a hard time with something that is called cognitive “set shifting”. Let’s see if I can explain this well enough for you to understand the concept and then help your child learn to set shift more easily and often.
Zoom function
Most of us are able to bring our attention in to focus on a detail in our environment - like the zoom function on a camera.
We are also able move out again easily for a broader and broader view - like the wide angle lense on the camera.
Looking at a toy car, for example, we can study for a moment the little wheel on the car and see how it spins. Then we can move our attention out to see and think about the whole car as a vehicle. Then we move our attention out further still and see the road system set up where we can drive the car.
If we are playing cars with a friend, it is not hard to take in what our friend is doing with cars three feet away... even if we had been entirely focused on the cool looking hubcaps on the car in his hand just a moment before.
We can shift our attention into a planning mode and suggest that it might be fun to race our cars down the hall way together. Even if we imagined the race would start by the door to the kitchen, we quickly agree that it can start at the other end of the hall by the bathroom when our friend suggests this would be better. We can agree because we can imagine the race either way and don’t see that it makes any difference which way we go.
We can wait for our friend to get beside us in the hall way and coordinate when we will start our race. We are careful to follow the starting rules that we set up together because we can imagine our friend being angry if we “jump the gun” on the race and start out first.
After the race, we can take in our friend’s disappointment at losing the race even as we gleefully enjoy having won it. We can behave with good sportsmanship because we remember that we want to play with this friend again tomorrow.
The ability to move in to focus on some small aspect of a situation and then out to the larger picture almost effortlessly is called “set shifting”
Kids with ASD have trouble with this kind of rapid set shifting. It is like the distance function on the camera of the mind gets stuck at a single distance and can't move in or out.
The young child with ASD might be able to shift from looking at the wheel of the car to looking at the door of the car. But zooming attention out to look at the car as a whole is very hard once attention has been focused narrowly on the wheel.
This is one reason why drill type learning can be quite effective with children who have ASD. All the items in the drill are at a similar "set". For example, "What color is this car?" "Red" What color is this train?" "Green" "What color is this banana?" "Yellow".
The child never describes the car as red or the train as green or the banana as yellow because answering color questions is one set, but talking about what you see in terms of color is another set entirely. So the learning seems fragmented and not functional.
In an older child with ASD, the problem with set shifting may make it hard for the child to move from a section in a math assignment where adding is required to a section in the assignment where subtracting is required — even though adding and subtracting are equally easy for the child to do.
In a high school aged child, the problem may be in trying to understand conversations that veer unexpectedly from wide topic to narrow topic.
In other words: This difficulty with set shifting is a very persistent issue and is worth the effort to understand.
Many of the strategies that are used to help children with ASD regardless of age are really little tricks that help the child with cognitive set shifting. Or long term strategies aimed at helping the child become a more flexible set shifter.
I will use an example from a recent therapy session to illustrate this concept.
I got out a new toy to play with one of my little friends — I will call him Andy.
The toy (left) is a nice combination of a construction toy and pretend play toy. The puzzle is meant to be set up like an inset puzzle. You assemble a park by setting the wooden pieces where they fit in the wooden base. Andy likes inset puzzles and knows how to do them.
Unfortunately, Andy did not see the toy as an inset puzzle. He only saw one riveting, wonderful piece — the duck.
Andy became enamored with the duck. He immediately held it close and ran away so that there was no danger of my taking the duck away from him.
Far away from me, he looked at the duck over and over as he touched it. He loves animal toys.
So now I am faced with a choice: Either give up on teaching him to play with this toy today, force him to play with it the way that I want him to (you can probably imagine how much fun that would be), or find some way to show him new play possibilities with this toy — preferably at the level of pretend play but absolutely at the level of social play because my primary goal is for Andy to play with me in a reciprocal way.
Here is where the issue of set shifting comes in. Andy’s mental set around the toy was narrow (just this duck) and perceptual or sensory (how cool this duck is to feel and see) and non-social (I want to be left alone with this toy).
I wanted to widen his mental set to include more than just the duck. I wanted to shift his mental set from the feel of the duck to pretending that the duck was doing something. I wanted him to enjoy my being involved with the same toys that he was.
So I start by giving up the game entirely and going back to something he loves having me do with him.
I coax him into my arms where I twirled him a couple times. I sit with him in my lap facing me and dip him down, so his head touches the floor and pull him up which he likes. Soon I am saying “Ready, set…” and he says “Go” to get me to dip him down again.
Physically interactive games are nearly always fun for Andy so we play on his terms for a while. I don’t even think about the duck until he is firmly in the mind set of Play with Tahirih is fun.
In terms of set shifting, we did not shift very much from Andy's set. Andy was already involved in a sensory activity (enjoying the physical properties of the duck) so I stayed with a sensory activity (spinning and dipping).
I was now part of his sensory play—important to his play, in fact, because he couldn't twirl himself around like I could. We had established happy reciprocal play. I am no longer Tahirih the potential duck thief. I am Tahirih the carnival ride. But I am actually plotting to get that duck!
As I play with Andy, I moved into a corner of the room. I was sitting in front of Andy so that it was not so easy for Andy to run off across the room like he did last time.
I bring the rest of the game pieces closer to us. Andy becomes aware that I might be setting him up so he lays down limp on his back with the duck clutched tightly in his hand and his hand down by his side. I slip the duck out of his hand while he looks away avoiding eye contact with Tahirih the duck thief!
But before he can react to my theivery, I quickly I replace the duck in his hand with the wooden boy. When Andy looks at it, I say “Hi boy!” and then quickly put the duck back in his hand. "Hi Duck!"
We play this little game over and over. I give him back the duck every other time. Each toy that I slip into his hand is greeted by me enthusiastically - “Hi girl!" "Hi duck!" "Hi mail box!" "Hi duck!" "Hi tree!" "Hi duck!"
Andy was tolerant of the game and increasingly participated until he voluntarily gave up any toy in order to see what came next.
Now his cognitive set includes both me as a play partner and more toys than just the duck. I had helped him shift his focus to include many more elements to his play. I had even been able to introduce a pretend play element into the play by saying hi to each character.
Andy sat up suddenly, clearly more ready to be engaged in play with me now that he understood what we were doing.
I brought out the doorway part of the toy and then and we started playing a game that went like this:
I knocked on one side of the door, he opened the door, I had a wooden piece on the other side of the door say “Hi” and the wooden piece (duck, boy, girl, mailbox, or tree) went through the doorway. We then said “Bye-bye” to the visitor and the wooden toy would leave by way of the door. We shut the door each time and started the game over.
We played this game with Andy enjoying it enough to independently send the duck back out the door (giving it up of his own volition).
Now the game was starting to look like pretend play. Could we put the doorway into the wooden base? We did and we started to move the pieces through the door on the track, just as is intended with this toy.
I do not believe that this game ever looked like a park to Andy — but he did learn to use the toy physically as it was intended. The doorway was an element of pretend play that made sense to Andy and he put pieces of the game into my hand to get me to play with them.
Andy was able to shift his understanding of the game from one that was narrow, perceptual and self-directed to one that was much wider, conceptual, and social.
Now, here is the easier way that I might have accomplished all this. I could have simply shown Andy a video clip of the game before I ever showed him the toy and he would have started with the cognitive set that I wanted him to have.
The whole toy would have seemed familiar as soon as he looked at it the first time and not just the duck. He would have known what we were going to do with the toy.
Regardless of what strategy you use, remember that it is very difficult for your child to shift attention, not just from activity to activity but also from a narrow focus to a wider focus, or from a wider focus to a more narrow focus within an activity. If you can see that this is the problem, you will be able to find ways to help your child zoom in and out as needed.
See Finding Common Ground Post for related discussion