The SLP Guide to ABA: Principles to Support Inter-Professional Collaboration on Autism Support Teams. Baltimore: Paul H. Brookes Publishing Company.

Baltimore, MD: Paul Brookes Publishing Company.

Autism Advocate, 3, 21-24. Implementing PECS in the home, community and generalizing PECS across settings and people.

Originally designed to enable young children with autism lacking functional communication to initiate requests and to describe what they observed, the Picture Exchange Communication System (PECS) has been the subject of an ever-expanding body of research and development. Thirty-four peer-reviewed published reports on PECS are analyzed in this article with documentation of research questions, methodology, and results. Findings suggest that PECS is providing people around the globe who have no or impaired speech with a functional means of communication. Refinements in methodology and additional questions that might be addressed in future research are discussed.

Summary: One area of persistent difficulties for children with autism is communication, with about 25% of individuals with autism not developing spoken language at all. In light of this information, it is of paramount importance to have means of teaching those individuals how to pass to others information about their needs and wants in a socially appropriate and easily understood manner. Picture Exchange Communication System (PECS) is an empirically-validated alternative and augmentative communication method. In the present article we will provide a brief tutorial on PECS that may be of help to health care professionals who in their work come across children with autism. In conclusion, PECS is a method that has been created specifically for individuals who have language development difficulties. It is based on applied behavior analysis and thus is supported by strong theoretical foundation – mainly Skinner's analysis of verbal behaviour – and empirical research. The system itself has been evaluated in a number of separate studies as well as few meta-analyses. The overall conclusion is that PECS is an effective, evidence-based method that teaches children how to communicate effectively and efficiently. It also reduces rates of problem behavior and for some children is associated with speech development. For interested individuals, more information on PECS can be found at: www.pecs.com.

Baltimore, MD: Paul Brookes Publishing Company. Pp. 279-302.

Paper presented at the Annual Association for Behavior Analysis Convention, Toronto, CA.

Paper presented at the Annual Association for Behavior Analysis Convention, Toronto, CA.

Book chapter, based on work by Teresa Webb and Sue Baker in a class in the UK.

Individuals with autism and severe mental retardation typically display deficits in both communicative input and communicative output skills. Comprehension of spoken input may be particularly challenging for individuals with autism, for a number of reasons. This paper presents two case studies examining the impact of varying the form of communicative input on behavior management targets as well as performance on an object identification task. Both cases involved students with autism and no speech. One student responded with poor task performance and high frequencies of self-injury to spoken communication but not to gestures alone or gestural plus spoken communication. The other student displayed a similar pattern of task performance and showed an increased tendency toward disruptive behavior in response to spoken or spoken plus gestural communication only in high-stress situations. Program modifications (changes in the communication approaches of these students' communicative partners) are described. It is suggested that the impact of spoken communicative input on task performance and behavior management targets of individuals with autism be probed in cases where more straightforward programming issues have been addressed with only limited success.

The Picture Exchange Communication System [PECS®) was first described in autism research literature in the early 1990s. Since that time, there have been almost 200 publications about the PECS protocol from countries around the world. The manualized PECS protocol has six key phases beginning with simple requests involving single icons, and building toward commenting, responding to other people's communication, and increased message length through picture combinations.1 We developed the protocol with very young children with autism spectrum disorder [ASDJ, but there are now publications involving adolescents and adults, as well as individuals with a wide variety of learning needs.

The SLP Guide to ABA: Principles to Support Inter-Professional Collaboration on Autism Support Teams. Baltimore: Paul H. Brookes Publishing Company.

Behavior Analysis and Technology, July.

Exceptional children: An introduction to special education (10th ed.) (pp. 302-303). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson.

Autism/Asperger's Digest, June-July, 15-16.

Baltimore, MD: Woodbine House.

Autism Asperger's digest, 2003, Mar.-Apr., pp. 24-25, 31.

Baltimore, MD: Woodbine House

In E. Schopler & G. Mesibov (Eds.). Learning and Cognition in Autism. (pp. 311-333). New York: Plenum Pub. Co.

The Behavior Analyst. 16, 123-128.

Functional communication skills are essential for all learners and must be promoted within all environments, including the home. During this time of home confinement, many families will need to look at opportunities for their children to use existing functional communication skills or even to acquire new skills. This article describes a set of 9 critical communication skills and provides a variety of examples of how families can improve the use of these important skills. Some of these involve speaker (expressive) skills, whereas others involve listener (receptive) skills.

Advances in Neurodevelopmental Disorders, 3, 351-362.Abstract: The use of technology, especially speech-generating devices (SGDs), has generated a great deal of attention. In order to assess the quality and effectiveness of such strategies, many issues related to terminology and teaching require careful attention. The first section begins with a discussion about functional communication, including long-term goals, from a behavioral perspective. Key issues will include speaker vs. listener distinctions, functional units, and factors related to expanding communication repertoires. The next section reviews SGDs, their popularity, and concerns such as distinguishing between toy use vs. communication device and the role of the audio output. Next, factors related to demonstrations that a user knows the meaning of words in different modalities will be considered. There follows a look at some research examples related to both SGD and picture use by adolescents and adults with ASD regarding functional communication. This section includes examples of studies that appear to have overestimated functional outcomes as well as noting the overall paucity of research demonstrating a robust gain in repertoire size and complexity. Lastly, suggestions are offered associated with determining how clinicians can assure that efforts to teach functional communication to individual teenagers and adults will result in effective outcomes.

A variety of strategies have been used to help children with autism acquire functional communication skills. The Picture Exchange Communication System (PECS) is a unique communication training program that was developed as a means of circumventing some shortcomings associated with these strategies. A description of the steps within PECS is provided. Long-term group data have indicated that a large proportion of children started on PECS as preschoolers acquire speech. Individual and group data supporting the use of PECS are provided. (http://www.proedinc.com)

The Picture Exchange Communication System (PECS) was developed as a means to teach children with autism and related developmental disabilities a rapidly acquired, self-initiating, functional communication system. Its theoretical roots combine principles from applied behavior analysis and guidelines established within the field of alternative and augmentative communication. This approach has several potential advantages relative to imitation-based strategies (both vocal and gestural) and symbol selection strategies. The system begins with the exchange of simple icons but rapidly builds “sentence” structure. The system also emphasizes developing the request function prior to developing responding to simple questions and commenting. The development of requesting with a sentence structure also permits the rapid development of attributes more traditionally taught within a receptive mode. The relationship between the introduction of PECS and various other behavioral issues (i.e., social approach and behavior management) as well as its relationship to the codevelopment of speech are reviewed.

The Picture Exchange Communication System (PECS) is an alternative/augmentative communication system that was developed to teach functional communication to children with limited speech. The approach is unique in that it teaches children to initiate communicative interactions within a social framework. This article describes the advantages to implementing PECS over traditional approaches. The PECS training protocol is described wherein children are taught to exchange a single picture for a desired item and eventually to construct picture-based sentences and use a variety of attributes in their requests. The relationship of PECS's implementation to the development of speech in previously non-vocal students is reviewed. (http://www.sagepub.com)

Baltimore, MD: Woodbine House.

In O.I. Lovaas (Ed.). Teaching Individuals with Developmental Disabilities: Basic Intervention Techniques (pp. 291-303). Austin, TX: Pro-Ed. [Book chapter].

In J. Handleman & S. Harris (Ed.) School-age education programs for children with autism (pp. 163-193). Austin: TX. Pro-Ed Inc.

Autism/Asperger Digest, 31, 24-25.Visually impaired (Braille, tactile symbols)

In J. Handleman & S. Harris (Ed.) Pre-school education programs for children with autism 3rd Edition). (pp. 283-308). Austin: TX. Pro-Ed Inc.

Professionals in the field of speech-language pathology (SLP) and applied behavior analysis (ABA) share a common goal in the treatment of communication disorders. The two fields, however, do not share a common language. Skinner's definition of verbal behavior and his classification of verbal operants provide interventionists with a valuable tool for classifying verbal behavior based on controlling variables. An understanding of the primary verbal operants and operants under multiple control are essential for planning efficient verbal behavior intervention. This paper presents a primer on B.F. Skinner's 1957 publication, Verbal Behavior, a description of the primary verbal operants, verbal operants under multiple control, and a discussion of using this taxonomy for writing precise communication goals for effective intervention.

This paper presents Skinner's (1957) analysis of verbal behavior as a framework for understanding language acquisition in children with autism. We describe Skinner's analysis of pure and impure verbal operants, and illustrate how this analysis may be applied to designing communication training programs. The Picture Exchange Communication System (PECS) is a training program influenced by Skinner's framework. We describe the training sequence associated with PECS, and illustrate how this sequence may establish multiply controlled verbal behavior in children with autism. We conclude with an examination of how Skinner's framework may apply to other communication modalities and training strategies. (http://www.abainternational.org)

We describe the behavior analytic approach to helping people with Asperger syndrome regarding social interaction and communication issues. In the behavior analytic approach, the cause of maladaptive behavior is not attributed to the disability itself. Maladaptive behaviors are viewed as a function of the interaction between an individual and the environment. Therefore, we assess these functional relationships and intervene by modifying aspects of the environment. Functional assessment is one of the most effective methods to evaluate the cause of problem behaviors and helps in the selection of an intervention strategy. We teach students functionally equivalent alternative behaviors that are socially appropriate and yet met the needs of the individual. Furthermore, we discuss the importance of teaching individuals with Asperger syndrome critical skills, including communication skills, self-management skills, and how to deal with anxiety.

The present symposium was conducted at a seminar on and communication held on July 12, 2008, at Hosei University in Tokyo. First, a comprehensive program for teaching communication skills to autistic children at Keio University was presented. Second, a family-support program provided by the University of Tsukuba to teach an autistic child using PECS at home was introduced. Third, a family and school support program based on functional communication training provided by a private clinic (TASUC Ltd.) was described. Finally, the discussant, Bondy, commented on each presentation on the basis of his expertise in providing communication training for teachers and parents working with children with autism.

Picture discrimination, essential to any picture-based communication program, often is taught through 'match-to-sample' (MTS) requests for object-picture pairings. We compared that method to the match-to-sample approach inherent in the Picture Exchange Communication System (PECS). In the traditional MTS condition, we showed the children a picture and asked them to match it to one of a set of objects. Correct matches were rewarded with an item preferred by the child, but unrelated to the sample stimulus; errors were followed with an error correction procedure. In the 'naturalistic PECS' condition, a child-preferred and a non-preferred item were displayed. Next, s/he was shown two pictures, each of which corresponded to the items. When s/he handed one of the pictures to the therapist, s/he received the matching item. If the child chose a picture representing an item known to be non-preferred, an error correction procedure followed. Four of 5 children required fewer trials to criterion in the 'naturalistic PECS' condition than the 'MTS' training condition.

A note about the interviews from the editors: The use of Skinner's Verbal Behavior (VB) classification system has been increasingly applied to learners with autism. We asked several of the best known behavior analysts to answer some key questions regarding this practice, the state of research regarding the advantages of this approach, and the confusion that exists regarding the application of VB to this population of learners. We structured the responses to follow each question separately, indicating the responder in each case. At the end of the interviews, you will find relevant references from each responder. (http://www.baojournal.com/BAT%20Journal/VOL-11/BAT%2011-3.pdf)

This report describes the introduction of the Picture-Exchange Communication System (PECS) to the Ann Sullivan Center, a program for developmentally disabled children and adults in Lima, Peru. PECS was developed in the Delaware Autistic Program, a public school program in the United States with a strong behavior-analytic orientation for children with autism. We will briefly describe PECS, its advantages with people with language disabilities, and our efforts to work with the staff of the Ann Sullivan Center to implement the system. (http://www.abainternational.org)

The Picture Exchange Communication System (PECS) is an augmentative/alternative communication strategy for those who display little or no speech. The rationale for PECS and its training sequence is described. Each phase of training is associated with specific behavior analytic teaching strategies. Skinner's analysis of Verbal Behavior forms the basis for teaching particular skills at specific points in the training sequence and also provide guidelines for how best to design the teaching strategies. Common problems and potential solutions are offered for various levels of training. The relationship between PECS and the co-development of speech, as well as its impact upon other behaviors (e.g., behavior management concerns, social orientation, etc.) is briefly reviewed.

The Picture Exchange Communication System (PECS) is an alternative/augmentative communication protocol designed to help children and adults with autism and related disabilities to engage in functional communication. The protocol was developed over a number of years and was based on Skinner's analysis of verbal behavior. Publications about the application and effectiveness of PECS have grown steadily. However, there also are many misconceptions about the protocol and its implementation. This paper reviews some of the research associated with PECS, describes several myths and misconceptions, and attempts to clarify many of the issues raised.

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