PECS

In exploring effective communication strategies for children with Autism I came across the article USING THE PICTURE EXCHANGE COMMUNICATION SYSTEM (PECS) WITH CHILDREN WITH AUTISM: ASSESSMENT OF PECS ACQUISITION, SPEECH, SOCIAL-COMMUNICATIVE BEHAVIOR, AND PROBLEM BEHAVIOR by Marjorie H. Charlop-Christy. The article discusses the effectiveness of the Picture Exchange Communication System known as PECS in terms of increasing verbal speech, social communicative behaviors, and decreasing problem behaviors.

PECS is an augmentative communication system that uses behavioral principles and techniques such as shaping to teach children functional communication using pictures.  The child will keep the PECS board, a notebook with velco, and is taught to use the pictures to create sentences such as “I want” card plus “juice” (a picture of juice) card. The picture below is an example of a sentence a child could create with his/her PECS board.

    

PECS encourages nonverbal children to make requests (“I want [juice]”), answer questions (“What do you want?”), and make social comments (“I see [the ball]”). The PECS books are used internationally with children with Autism and are beneficial for many reasons. PECS encourages and teaches children to communicate, but it does not require very complex motor skills or the learning of a new language, such as sign language, it is inexpensive and can be used across varied settings, and can be taught fairly quickly. PECS is unique in that it requires children to approach listeners and initiate communication, instead of just answer questions.

The article stated that the study found that PECS does significantly improve verbal speech (both spontaneous and imitative speech), does improve social communication behaviors, and does decrease problem behaviors, such as aggression. All three participants (3 young boys with Autism) experienced gains in speech and in the mean length of utterances. This was very encouraging to me because PECS is an effective strategy/resource that I can use with my future SLP patients and something that I can recommend to families to use with their children with Autism. A simple system such as PECS can improve the communication and quality of relationships within the family and reduce stress that is caused by a lack of communication and problem behaviors associated with Autism.

This journal article can be found at    http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1284381/pdf/12365736.pdf.

Here is a short video of a parent using PECS at home to communication with her son:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=98b_oSlxLvU&feature=endscreen&NR=1