Teaching Children with Autism to Mind-Read: The Workbook

The difficulties experienced by children with autism and related conditions in inferring the thoughts, beliefs, desires, and intentions of others are well documented. Teaching Children with Autism to Mind-Read: A Practical Guide is widely recognized as an innovative and effective teaching resource for practitioners in the field to help individuals with Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD) improve their understanding of other people's minds. This new workbook expands on the original work of the authors — all recognized experts in the field — to present the latest and most effective approaches, strategies, and practical guidelines to help alleviate social and communication problems in individuals with ASD. 

Working in concert with the authors' original volume, the workbook covers issues such as how to:

1. interpret facial expressions
2. recognize feelings of anger, sadness, fear and happiness
3. perceive how feelings are affected by what happens and what is expected to happen
4. see things from another person’s perspective
5. understand another person’s knowledge and beliefs

Teaching Children with Autism to Mind-Read: A Workbook is an invaluable resource for professionals, parents, or anyone else assisting individuals with ASD. 

It is now established that difficulties in understanding other people’s minds underlie many of the social and communication problems that are characteristic of autism. This workbook offers practical teaching materials and learning tools for the practitioner in the field, exploring the relationship of ‘theory of mind’ deficits to social and communication problems in children with autism. A companion to Teaching Children with Autism to Mind-Read: A Practical Guide, this book is based on the authors' successful experimental work and provides a detailed interven­tion program, with accessible teach­ing materials to help autistic children improve their understanding of beliefs, emotion, and pretence.

This workbook expands upon the authors? Teaching Children with Autism to Mind-Read: A Practical Guide to present the most effective approaches, strategies, and practical guidelines to help alleviate social and communication problems in individuals with Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD).

• Complements the best-selling Teaching Children with Autism to Mind-Read: A Practical Guide for use in practical settings
• Answers the need for more training of professionals in early interventions for children assessed with ASD called for by the National Plan for Autism
• Written by a team of experts in the field
• Covers issues such as how to interpret facial expressions; how to recognize feelings of anger, sadness, fear and happiness; how to perceive how feelings are affected by what happens and what is expected to happen; how to see things from another person?s perspective; and how to understand another person?s knowledge and beliefs

Julie Hadwin is Lecturer in Developmental Psychology at Southampton University, UK. 

Patricia Howlin is Professor of Clinical Child Psychology at the Institue of Psychiatry, King’s College, London. She is the author of numerous books and articles on intervention in autism, including Children with Autism and Asperger Syndrome (1998). 

Simon Baron-Cohen is Professor of Developmental Psychopathology and Director of the Autism Research Centre at Cambridge University, UK, and one of the co-discoverers of the 'theory of mind' deficit in autism. His books include Mindblindness (1995), The Essential Difference (2003) and Autism and Asperger Syndrome: The Facts (2009).