Big Picture Thinking - Using Central Coherence Theory to Support Social Skills: A Book for Students

Does your student have difficulties in understanding the big picture and supporting details? This can help. Many people who have difficulties with social cognition, including those on the autism spectrum, do not see the big picture of a situation. That is, they tend to focus, or even hyper-focus, on details and have difficulty recognizing the main idea, topic or general point in conversations, stories or pictures. This is often referred to as challenges in central coherence. Good central coherence skills are essential to success in (a) reading comprehension across all school subjects including math word problems, (b) establishing school or work priorities, and interacting with others. Big Picture Thinking: Using Central Coherence Theory to Support Social Skills was written to help students with autism and related disabilities use individual pieces of social information fit into a larger context, so that they may begin to become big picture thinkers and, therefore, be more successful.