Lack of awareness about attention levels of children with autism

The perspective of various people who work with children with autism was the focus of a dissertation by Joanna Galea, who recently completed her postgraduate studies in Inclusion and Special Educational Needs (SEN) at the University of Birmingham, UK.
The study made use of a mixed-method approach as its aim was to obtain different viewpoints, from a transdisciplinary team in an educational setting, in relation to the attention skills of children with autism. The five levels of attention skills were focused upon in the study, namely attention, sustained attention, selective attention, alternating attention, and divided attention. These levels relate to the mental control one needs to keep and handle the absorbed information.
The participants in the study consisted of parents and professionals who support primary school-aged children. The latter included educators, speech language therapists and occupational therapists. Each participant completed an anonymous online questionnaire and, thereafter, the researcher conducted a follow-up interview with four participants who had kindly expressed an interest to further discuss the research topic.

The interviews were conducted with a...