Communication & Language Evidence Based Practices
Augmentative and Alternative Communication devices presentation
• Discrete Trial Teaching (DTT) is a one-to-one instructional approach used to teach skills in a planned, controlled, and systematic manner. It is used when a learner needs to learn a skill best taught in small repeated steps.
• Functional Communication Training (FCT) is used to decrease the incidence of interfering behaviors and to those behaviors with clearer communicative forms. Children with ASD are taught alternative ways to communicate that serve the same function as the interfering behavior. Functional communication training usually includes FBA, differential reinforcement of alternative behavior, and/ or extinction.
• Imitation and Modeling: Imitation and modeling are prerequisite skills for the development of various skills including communication.• Joint Action Routine is a strategy used to encourage communication skills. Following a predictable and logical sequence of events, the activity relies on routine verbal exchanges by those involved.
• Naturalistic Language Strategies : are child-centered and take place during naturally occurring routines and activities. The approach promotes communication and language development through environmental arrangement, responsive communication partners, and prompting, modeling, and reinforcement.
• Social narratives are interventions that describe social situations in some detail by highlighting relevant cues, and offering examples of appropriate responding.
• Peer Mediated Instruction and Intervention (PMII) teaches peers to interact and support students with ASD in acquiring new social skills in natural environments.
• Picture Exchange Communication System (PECS) is a behaviorally based, alternative communication system based on the principles of Applied Behavior Analysis (ABA) and B.F.Skinner’s Verbal Behavior. PECS teaches the child to become an initiator of communication by exchanging a picture symbol for a desired object, etc. Learners are initially taught to give a picture of a desired item to a communicative partner in exchange for the desired item. PECS consists of six phases which are: (1) “how” to communicate, (2) distance and persistence, (3) picture discrimination, (4) sentence structure, (5) responsive requesting, and (6) commenting.
• Pivotal Response Training (PRT) uses the principles of ABA. PRT is effective for developing communication, language, play, and socia skills. Interventions enhance 4 pivotal skills: motivation, responding to multiple cues, self-management, and self-initiations.
• Video Modeling (VM) is a mode of teaching that uses video recording and display equipment to provide a visual model of the targeted behavior or skill.
• Voice Output Communication Aids (VOCA) are portable electronic devices that provide computer generated or digitized speech output
Reference. Brown Lofland, K (2014), Evidence-Based Practices for Effective Communication and Social Intervention Retrieved from https://www.iidc.indiana.edu/irca/articles/evidence-based-practices-for-effective-communication-and-social-intervention.html