Relationship Development Intervention® RDI® provides a second chance for children and adolescents with autism to develop their ability to function successfully in a complex and ever changing world.
Relationship Development Intervention® RDI® addresses areas of social and emotional development that typical children achieve in their early years that form the basis for developing and understanding relationships with others.
Relationship Development Intervention® RDI® guides parents to help their child manage and engage with the complexity and dynamic changes that occur in their daily life rather than avoiding them or becoming overwhelmed.
What happened in Autism Spectrum Disorder ASD?
This includes all diagnoses under the umbrella of ASD - Autism, Asperger’s, PDD NOS
The brains of Neurotypical children develop greater ability for ad-hoc collaboration between different brain centres. This “connectivity” provides the opportunity for flexible, original and integrated responses to the environment.
The brains of people with ASD demonstrate significant under connectivity in their formation of neural connections. This reduces the development of collaborative brain functions necessary for developing Dynamic Intelligence ability.
As ASD brains develop, they appear to preserve and possibly enhance the functioning of specific individual cortical processing centres. This leads to development of the Static Intelligence ability further reducing the potential of the collaborative connections that are essential for the development of Dynamic Intelligence abilities. Without Dynamic Intelligence an independent Quality of Life may not be possible to achieve. It is the loss of this opportunity to develop Dynamic Intelligence abilities that create the Core Deficits for people with Autism.
As the world becomes more Dynamic it requires increased reliance on our Dynamic Intelligence abilities for us to manage and create a sense of competence for ourselves.
Without Dynamic Intelligence an independent Quality of Life may not be possible to achieve.
Exploding the myth of the “critical period” for brain development
“The brain is also dynamic, meaning that it is forever in a state of change. An open dynamic system is one that is in continual emergence with a changing environment and the changing state of its own activity.”
Daniel Siegel, 1999
Current research in ASD - Foundations for RDI®
“Just think and you will realize how remarkable thinking is”
“The autistic child’s lack of emotional connectedness with others is devastating in its own right, but also it has quite startling implications for the child’s ability to think.”
“Thinking becomes possible because a child separates out one person’s perspective from another’s.”
“By missing out on having meaning first pass through other’s minds, people with Autism never discover that they are mental beings with the capacity to function in their personal mental space in a creative & flexible manner.”
The Cradle of Thought Peter Hobson, 2004
“People with autism don’t have the automatic cross talk between brain systems –the reasoning and memory systems –that tells their brain what is most important to notice or how to organize it thematically.”
Nancy Minshew, 2005
"Infants must [learn to] fail repeatedly in their efforts to master the challenges presented by dynamic systems. Were such failure routinely to lead to fear & disengagement, rather than continued effort, cognitive structures would not change. Only if failure leads to persistence will the infant learn to remain engaged until an adaptive solution is reached."
Alan Sroufe, 1996
“One of the most difficult of parental tasks is to avoid helping children at points when they need the freedom to make their own decisions –and often, their own errors.”
Barbara Rogoff, 1991
"As children demonstrate increased skill in handling a process, their more expert partners can revise their level of support to be at the edge of the novice’s skill…”
Barbara Rogoff, 1991
Marcel Just - “The brains of Neurotypical children develop greater ability for ad-hoc collaboration between different brain centers. This “connectivity” provides the opportunity for flexible, original and integrated responses to the environment.
The brains of people with ASD demonstrate significant under connectivity in their formation of neural patterns. As ASD brains develop, they appear to preserve and possibly enhance the functioning of individual cortical processing centres."
Loss of Neural Connectivity 2004 Marcel Just and his team: Carnegie Mellon University
Marcel Just - “This study offers compelling evidence that a lack of synchronization in the Theory of Mind network is largely responsible for social challenges in Autism” said Just, Director of Carnegie Mellson’s Centre for Cognitive Brain Imaging. “That evidence can provide the foundation for therapies that are more useful than current approaches”
Recent Research, Marcel Just 2008, Carnegie Mellon University
A New Vision for Autism Spectrum Disorders is possible with RDI®
- Autism will no longer be an impediment to employment
- Adults with ASD will be able to live autonomously & competently manage their daily affairs
- They will possess the ability for mutually supportive friendships and relationships
- They will continue to grow, develop and aspire to new goals and dreams
- They will live each day without fear, knowing that future challenges can be managed successfully
Relationship Development Intervention RDI® is a parent based programme, aimed at guiding and empowering parents and family members to help their children reach their potential and Quality of Life goals.
Parents are provided with the tools necessary to develop and maintain a quality of life for the entire family.
Parents are coached to use the activities of daily life to embed safe but challenging experiences for the child.
Children learn to respond in more flexible, thoughtful ways to novel increasingly unpredictable settings and problems.
Safety and trust emerge as children learn they can see regularity and pattern even in a continually more complex and changing world.
Real world competence emerges as they take ever greater responsibility for conquering authentic tasks and problems with many partners in many settings.
RDI® is systematic but flexible, developmental, balancing and normalizing, easy to carry out in normal everyday life, structured and guided.
It is a Third Generation remediation process, designed to break the cycle of failure for both the parents and the child. It translates into day to day situations so the whole family benefits.
Evolution of RDI®
- RDI® was developed by Dr. Steve Gutstein
- Dr. Gutstein’s progression:
- Looked the the Quality of Life outcomes for people with Autism that indicated limited success
- Looked at others research about what is autism?
- Studied typical development: how do typical children learn the “core deficits”
- Decides if typical development works before resorting to alternative means.
- Why scrap the developmental process if it can be re-engineered for ASD?
How RDI® is getting there
- Investing in building minds, not shaping behaviours behaviours
- Developing the dynamic abilities needed for real-world success
- Applying modern, “best practices” for learning
- Investing in families first
- Including older children, teens and adult
- Tailoring intervention to each person’s unique needs
Guided Participation
"Children’s cognitive development is an apprenticeship. It occurs through guided participation in social activity with companions who support and stretch children’s understanding of and skill in using the tools of culture.”
Barbara Rogoff, 1991
The guide is the orchestrator and architect of dynamic learning, designing experiences that will lead the child to make meaningful connections
Goals of RDI® - Remediation
- Restoring the child’s trust and motivation for cognitive apprenticeship
- Building children’s competence in mastering increasingly complex dynamic systems in many different settings with many different partners
- Transferring the impetus for discovery and life-long growth to the child
- Increasing neural integration & collaboration
- Restoring normal family life
© Gutstein, Sheely & Associates, P.C. d/b/a The Connections Center. All rights reserved. http://www.RDIconnect.com
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