Cougar Communication Group Summary

Speech therapy is also a commonly used therapy with children who have been diagnosed with ASD. Every educator interviewed included speech therapy in the list of therapies they incorporate into educating students with ASD. Speech is helpful

According to the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association (ASHA), Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is defined as "a neurodevelopmental disorder characterized by deficits in social communication and social interaction and the presence of restricted, repetitive behaviors. Social communication deficits include impairments in aspects of joint attention and social reciprocity, as well as challenges in the use of verbal and nonverbal communicative behaviors for social interaction" (2016). The Early Start Denver Model (ESDM) in a language intervention program recommended for children, usually 12 to 48 months of age, who present with ASD (Vivanti, 2016). According to Autism Speaks Inc., ESDM intervention requires training and certification and can be delivered by a psychologist, behaviorist, occupational therapist, speech and language pathologist, early intervention specialist or developmental pediatrician, and is intended as a naturalistic approach to therapy because it does not require a fixed setting for delivery. Generalization of the intervention requires intense parent involvement and "can be delivered by therapy teams and/or parents in group programs or individual sessions in either a clinic setting or the child 's home" (2016). According to Schreibman et al., ESDM combines naturalistic intervention behavioral intervention (NDBI) with Applied Behavioral Analysis (ABA) principles, which have shown through evidence based practice to induce behavioral changes,

Research has shown that early intervention with a child who has ASD, can greatly improve a child’s development. Early intervention services help children from birth up to three years old learn important skills such as, helping them learn to walk, talk, and be able to interact with others.

Ganz and Simpson (2004) were attempting to discredit this argument. They did this by trying to determine if the language abilities of three children with ASD would increase after the inclusion of a PECS program into their treatment plans. The researchers in this article found that two of the children who took part in this study made large gains in their ability to use the PECS system (they were both able to make it the phase 4). However, the third participant was unable to master any levels of the PECS protocol and, instead, had to use a modified PECS system. They also found that none of the three participants readily verbalized their wants at any point of the PECS phases, showing that the use of PECS is not always going to lead to an increase in expressive communication skills. This result adds strength to the argument that PECS interventions, don't increase the verbal communication abilities of children with ASD. However, the PECS program was still able to increase requesting capabilities. The researchers brought up other areas that require further research. These areas included; the need to understand comorbid diagnoses, other factors that might lead to an individual not being positively affected by a PECS program, and the modification of

When reflecting, it is important to consider how children with ASD communicate with adults or people in authority, as well as their peers. It is known there is a power relationship between teachers and students, which has a direct effect on the children’s development (Hayes & Matusov, 2005). In fact, the way in which teachers communicate with children has been found to have direct consequences on children’s language development (Dangel & Durden, 2010) and social interactions (Stanton-Chapman, 2015; Irvin, Boyd & Odom, 2014) both of which are important for those with ASD due to their specific deficits in these areas. It is possible that due to deficits in ToM and executive functioning, which are commonly recorded in ASD (Llaneza, et al.,

For example, in the video the teacher had cards that allowed the student to tell the teacher what she saw or heard. Often students with ASD have very limited social interaction or two way conversation because of the time it will take the two communicating parties to have a clear understanding of what the other person is trying to convey. A child with ASD often become frustrated when trying to communicate, and lead them into a state of screaming, crying, and extreme frustration. Due to the PECS causing less stress for the child, they are more willing to communicate and express

No. 3: Dawson et al 2004: early social attention impairments in ASD: including social orienting & joint attention i.e. joint attention

Carnazzo et al. (2002, article: 5 of 8) studied social skills interventions for students with ASD, and also included typical peers in training sessions. One area of their research, encouraged participation in peer mediated groups (using modeling, prompting, and reinforcement procedures) to improving interaction in cooperative learning groups. The second area of their research focused on ten-minute social skills lessons on play skills followed by unstructured play, where students were prompted and reinforced for the targeted behavior. The findings suggest that social skills training with peers is effective for increasing cooperative learning and play in the inclusive classroom. When peers are used as trainers they are taught to prompt, ignore inappropriate behaviors, engage in conversation, monitor skills, and reward appropriate behaviors (Christian, Luiselli, Russo, & Wilczynski, 2008). Michelle

This study will involve three male high school students who have a diagnosis of ASD. Students will have an IQ of 80 or above with a first-grade reading level. Students will be able to demonstrate listening and comprehension levels of the first grade as well the ability to communicate using both verbal and written forms. Using

The EBSR addressed specific questions on a particular topic which entails reviewing, critiquing, and integrating pertinent information from the selected studies in an effort to provide a synthesis of current based evidence. To better understand the treatment effects of social communication interventions, a framework made by ASHA was adopted. The framework groups intervention goals by social communication outcome categories across communication developmental stages; joint attention is establishing shared attention, social reciprocity entails maintaining interactions by taking turns, language and related cognitive skills applied to the use of understanding nonverbal and verbal communication, and behavioral and emotional regulation is the successful regulations of ones emotions and behaviors. The clinical questions for the EBSR are as

Many children with a diagnosis of ASD experience challenges within the areas of social interaction and communication (American Psychiatric Association, 2013). This can lead to challenges developing social and communication skills needed for play, such as sharing, turn-taking, copying simple actions and responding to others (Raising Children Network, 2013). Engagement in play for a child is important, as it promotes the development of gross and fine motor skills, language and communication, thinking and problem solving and creativity (Kasari, Chang & Patterson, 2013). Furthermore, a growing body of research has highlighted how play can influence social and emotional development in children with ASD (Hobson et al., 2013; Kasari, Chang & Patterson, 2013; Lindsey & Colwell, 2013; Rutherford & Rogers, 2003). Play is a broad term, and there are several types of play (Stagnitti, 2014). Some of these include exploratory play, cause and effect play, functional play, constructive play and imaginary play.

Firstly, one of the most popular early intervention programs is the applied behavioral analysis (ABA) program. There are a wide multitude of programs, but the most popular technique is the discrete trial technique. This type of technique as well as the others is classified as a comprehensive behavioral intervention. Currently, the UCLA Young Autism Project uses the discrete trial technique, where a trained ABA therapist works in the first year on imitation, play, trust building, interactions, and increasing reliable responses to basic commands. The second year focuses on building language repertoire, engaging in simple dialogue, working on describing emotions, and pre academic skills (Lovaas, 1987). The principles that revolve around this technique rely on positive reinforcement and operant conditioning principles to reduce problem behaviors in children with ASD by directing the specific behavioral reinforcement to the individual

Deficit in social development is another diagnostic characteristic of ASD (American Psychiatric Association, 2013). They exhibit impairments in relationships to peers, the use of nonverbal communicative behaviors within their social exchanges, the use of imitation, and symbolic or dramatic play. As described by DeMyer et al. (1972) and Stone et al. (1997), children with autism use fewer nonverbal gestures and a more limited range of facial expressions in their communications than children with other types of developmental disabilities of the same developmental and chronological age. Children with autism appear to pay less attention to other people’s emotional displays than do comparison groups and to demonstrate fewer acts of empathy or shared

Within each category there are specific strategies which a parent uses or can learn to use to facilitate language. When referring to the child’s focus of attention, the parent can partake in two strategies; follow-in comments and follow-in directives. Follow-in comments can be defined as providing language input geared toward the child’s focus without any expectation that the child respond or do something different (McDuffie et al., 2010), whether that be in play or conversation (e.g., Child pushes toy car down a hill, and parent follows-in with, “You pushed the car down the hill.”). This type of verbal responsiveness has been highly-correlated with long-term language gains in children with ASD (Venker et al., 2012). While follow-in directives also refer to the child’s focus of attention, this time the child is expected to respond, either behaviorally (eg., “Make the car go faster.”) or communicatively (eg., “What animal is that?”) (Haebig et al., 2013). When parents provide verbal input which follows into the child’s focus of attention, they are facilitating the development of the building blocks toward acquiring joint attention. In doing so, parents are also helping their child work towards correct linguistic mapping and may decrease mapping errors. Children with ASD tend to develop incorrect mapping because

None of the above pragmatic dysfunctions are measured on traditional language assessment instruments because traditional tests focus mostly on linguistic structure and meaning rather than on pragmatic language use (Anderson, Lord, & Heinz, 2005; Bishop, 1998; Bishop & Baird, 2001; Young et al., 2005). Thus, when a high-functioning child with ASD demonstrates intelligence scores in the normal range and obtains scores within normal limits on traditional language measures, it is difficult for parents and professionals to document the need for intervention even though the child’s dysfunctional social language skills are evident in conversation and place him or her in jeopardy for full participation in school and community environments (Kamhi, 1998; Young et al., 2005).