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Models and Classroom Instruction
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Models and Classroom Instruction: Intervention Models

• PECS is a visually oriented communication system developed at the Delaware Autistic Program by Andrew Bondy and Lori Frost.
  
  
• The goal is to help children with autism and other developmental disabilities rapidly acquire functional communication skills and initiate communication.
  
  
• PECS is used with children who either do not use speech or speak with limited effectiveness.
  
  
• The program relies on prompting, shaping, and fading techniques to gradually improve and modify how a child communicates.
  
  
• The program includes the following steps:
  • Basic exchange
  • Distance and persistence
  • Discrimination
  • Sentence building
  • Responding to "What do you want?"
  • Spontaneous and Responsive Commenting

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Program Method

The training is a six-phase process that helps the child progress from communicating through simple symbols to using a complex series of symbols that make up sentences. During Phase 1, the teacher identifies a highly motivating reward to get the child’s attention. With the help of a second teacher, the primary teacher enables the child to learn how to make a spontaneous request by using a picture symbol. Whenever the child makes a spontaneous request, the teacher verbally repeats the request to encourage oral communication. Over time, the child learns to pick up the picture of the desired object and to put this picture in the teacher’s hand without physical assistance. In Phase 2, the child learns to make the request in various environments, including different rooms and settings, as the second teacher is faded out of the training. The child learns to use one picture with several people and eventually to use several pictures, one by one. During Phase 3, the child learns to make choices between symbols, clarifying his or her desires. During this step, the teacher uses discrimination training to help the child choose among several pictures affixed to a communication board with Velcro.

As the child develops fundamental discrimination techniques, the teacher moves on to Phase 4, which helps the child develop sentence structure. The teacher helps the child create simple sentences by using a sequence of pictures on a sentence strip. During this phase, the teacher introduces an "I want" icon and gradually helps the student to request additional attributes of a desired object, including size, number, and location. During Phase 5, the child learns to respond to the question: "What do you want?" The child uses sentence strips to respond to this question. In Phase 6, the teacher helps the child make comments about an object by using icons, such as "I have" or "I see" or "There’s a." The child learns to differentiate between using the request icon and using the commentary icon.

Eventually, the child learns to exchange symbols with peers. The child uses a "PECS book" to facilitate this process. This book serves as a portable communication board and contains pages of icons and symbols, arranged by topic area. The teacher and other students in the classroom can work with the child to use these symbols. The PECS training is based entirely on child initiation. Throughout each stage, the child requests a certain item and receives the item because of a communicative act. The teacher responds by verbally repeating the child’s request to encourage oral language development. The child is motivated to learn in order to obtain exactly what he or she wants. The teacher helps the child learn how to generalize communication skills by using PECS in different settings with multiple request items and different communicative partners. Training can be conducted through ongoing classroom activities, with the option of providing additional instruction to the particularly needy child.

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Research on the Efficacy of PECS:

• The PECS program is widely used to help children who lack communication skills acquire a new communication repertoire and generalize functional language skills.
  
  
• PECS is especially helpful when combined with behavioral teaching methods.
  
  
• According to Bondy and Battaglini (1992), changes in communication skills are associated with changes in behavior management.
  
  
• According to Bondy and Frost (1994), 80% of the children entering the Delaware Autistic Program acquire functional speech. Controlled group studies are needed to affirm the role of PECS in the acquisition of functional speech.
  
  
• Bondy and Peterson (1990) found that 76% of 66 children who used PECS for more than one year have come to use speech either as their sole communication system or augmented by a picture-based system.
  
  
• Schwartz, Garfinkle, and Bauer (1998) in a study of 31 preschool children with severe communication delays, found that these children developed the ability to communicate with adults and peers by using PECS for 14 months. The PECS instruction took place in a natural classroom setting. Students received individualized instruction, which was faded out over time.
  
  
• Schwartz, Garfinkle, and Bauer (1998) in a study of 18 preschool children, found that these children learned to generalize language skills to untrained settings after using PECS for a year. The children developed the ability to use PECS across multiple environmental settings. Forty-four percent (44%) of these children developed unprompted, non-echolalic spoken communication.

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