I am working with autistic children. And I am trying to developp and adaptation of the CRT (cognitive remediation therapy) for austistic children. Working on planning, working memory and control regulation can help them to become adult with less executive dysfunction. Your proposition to make society understandable as a whole can be help by developping social skills (e.g. SocialBillyQuizz, F. Pourre a, E. Aubert a, J. Andanson a,b, J.-P. Raynaud, 2012)

My work is primarily with autistic children however I believe many of the same techniques used on young one apply equally to adults. 1. Simplify their tasks into simple, sequential step-by-step processes. This can be challenging, e.g. drafting instructions on how to simply tie a shoelace can involve 20-30 unique, individual instructions. 2. For many routine tasks, use the business approach of creating SOPs (standard operating procedures) that are repeatable regardless of individual-to-individual. 3. Finally, add Structure around (1) and (2) with tasks lists, check-offs or if computer-based, Task 1 must be completed prior to access to Task 2. A colleague works with a manufacturer who routinely utilizes severaly challenged adults for light assembly and packing. Faced with an individual who could not count to 25 nor understand when a job was "finished", developed a jig whereby the worker was instructed to continue filling each hole with a product until the jig was full, then place the jig onto a card and start over. An apparently "simple" solution that took several days to diagnose, develop and implement.

That is the thing I seem to keep running into- everyone works with kids. Any ideas of how to make it work for a job that's not just repeating the same task again and again? I'm trying to think of supports for Autistic people who could do things like college and the jobs that require degrees... if they could get their executive functioning issues taken care of. It's a range of ability for Autistic adults that's even less covered than most of the adult population, unfortunately.

The National Autistic Society in the UK has some information sheets about the ways people with autism can be helped at college and at work. Some of the references are UK specific, but the guidance is useful for anyone with an ASD. They outline common problems with tips for how the individual might be helped. Here are the links

"College and university: supporting students with Asperger syndrome" http://www.autism.org.uk/18333

"Managing someone with an ASD" (for employers)

http://www.autism.org.uk/23708

Is this the type of information you are looking for?

Our Autism Oxalate Project at the Autism Research Institute has found that biomedical treatment to reduce oxalate can help tremendously with executive function. If you are not familiar with what has been discovered about oxalate in autism, please read our first study conducted by a team in Poland showing the levels of oxalate found in children with autism. You can get a glimpse of the article here, and the charts comparing children with autism with control children: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1090379811001541

But, yes, our project has also found high levels of oxalate in adults with autism even though that isn't published yet. Through dietary intervention in reducing oxalate (which we've been working on for eight years), it is possible to see very surprising changes, even in middle-aged adults. Change may also occur when reducing oxalate through vitamin therapies which address specific reasons the body may have been making oxalate itself as it does in Primary Hyperoxaluria. Our project would love to do some coordinated work with educators in documenting before and after changes in function in adults when addressing their oxalate issues. I think it would be the most exciting to see how this issue was involved in very severe cases where things have not changed in years.

Executive function supports are part of job accommodations and are the province of vocational rehabilitation counselors. They are covered by the Americans with Disability Act on the job. An excellent source for these may be found at the Job Accommodation Network www.askjan.org Here is a link to the section on accommodations for autism http://askjan.org/media/autism.htm You may also benefit from looking at Asperger and ADHD which are closely related and less severe. The website allows searches by topic and by disability. I am both a special education teacher, and vocational rehabilitation counselor with 20 years experience. Reply if you need more details.