Case Study Of Using Picture Exchange Communication System To Improve The Communicating Ability Of Preschool Children With Autism

Abstract:Autism is a special kind of pervasive developmental disorder, with syndromes of impaired social interaction, verbal and nonverbal communication deficits, and repetitive, restricted, and stereotyped patterns of behavior or interests which begin before the age of3. Now the vast majority of professionals call this disorder as Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASDs). ASDs are broadly divided into five patterns are:Asperger’s syndrome, Autism, Rett’s syndrome, Childhood disintegrative disorder and Pervasive developmental disorder, unspecified. Although the prevalence is increasing rapidly, the difficulties of early detection and uncertainty of diagnostic interventions make it one of the global psychological, educational and medical community issues of common concern. Researchers have studied a variety of interventions involved in the training of autism, to promote their development in social interaction, communication, ability to relieve their symptoms. Among them the communicating problem is not only the important standard to diagnose but also the key point of rehabilitation training. Picture Exchange Communication System (PECS) is a expansively and alternative communicating system which aims at enhancing the functional communication of people who can’t talk; and this system enables children to communicate forwardly by means of training in different stages.This study is an embedded and singular research design with a single variable test method. The case of the study is an autistic preschool child at4years old. PECS, which has been already evidenced to be a kind of scientific system, is put into practice through six phases. In the study, this system is used to help the autistic preschool child to express basic living requirements, to enhance the children’s abilities of spoken expressions and to solve the problem which he feel more difficult to communicate without PECS. To be more specific, the study targets are the following three points:investigation into the time and efficiency of different stages of PECS; investigation into the instructional situations and strategies of different stages of PECS; investigation into the result of PECS.Because of various kinds of limitations, this study only accomplishes the front five stages of PECS, however, the consequence shows:the correct rate of the case in the five stages is above80%, and the time spent is short, so the case in this study is very suitable for PECS and visual advantage of the autism is perfectly match the communicating tool and communication with pictures is imported; the researcher applied reinforcement stimulants including small steamed buns, QQ candies, potato chips, sandwich biscuits, sea sedges and so on into the first five stages and the results show that combining reinforcement with pictures can effectively improve communicating abilities development of the case. Aiming at introspection of different stages, this study sums up the mains points of lessons of communicating training and presents relevant suggestions for teachers and parents in special schools and indicates subsequent studying direction and limits of the study.