Strategies and rules for teaching communication
- Choosing the right approach for your child -
Disclaimer: although some of these strategies and rules can be applied to neurotypical children, this article mainly addresses the parents of children with communication impediments.
One of the most requested interventions from all of my years of practice has been regarding teaching communication. Parents have always firstly picked upon their children showing signs of communication delay.
Although this is a pressing matter, through practice, resilience and patience, communication can be improved, and your child will be able to express needs and wants confidently.
Teaching communication is a massive topic and obviously very difficult to cover in one go, so I will break it down into a series of five articles. This first article covers four ways to teach effective communication and the five fundamental rules of doing so.
Four ways to teach communication
Here are four ways you can use to teach communication, depending on your child’s abilities, from vocal communication to using augmentative and alternative communication, in the forms of sign language, Picture Exchange Communication System (PECS) or speech-generating devices, in the forms of tablets or phones.
1. Vocal communication: Adding sounds to requests
The prerequisite for this way of communication is your child’s ability to make sounds. If your child makes certain sounds, you can add those sounds to specific requests, creating an association between the two. For example, if your child can say “wah”, it could be attributed to the “water” request.
2. Teaching sign language
If your child can’t make any sounds or doesn’t have a variety of them but can engage in moderate hand-motor imitation, then you could look into teaching them sign language. It can either be British Sign Language or Makaton. In this scenario you would add the sign for “water” to the request for water, creating an association between the two.
3. Teaching the Pictures Exchange Communication System
If your child struggles with motor imitation, you could look into teaching them the Pictures Exchange Communication System (PECS). For this method, each request has a designated picture which is exchanged for the particular item or activity.
4. Using speech generated devices: tables/phones
Like PECS, this system doesn’t require any hand-motor imitation. For this method of communication, the child presses the picture of a glass of water, and the app says “water” for them.
Five rules for teaching communication
Whichever method you use to teach your child to communicate, you have to follow these five rules:
1. Once you introduce a sound, sign, picture or app, be consistent and always use it when the child wants that specific item or activity
If the child experience differs between what’s accepted at home and at school, between parents and tutors, or between you and your extended family, they will get confused, and the learning process will take longer.
This rule is important to follow for all parents, whether your child has any impairments or not.
2. There shouldn’t be any free access to the item/activity
Let me explain this using an example. Let’s say you’re teaching your little one to request for “water”. If there are easily accessible cups of water everywhere around the house, then requesting for it becomes useless as they can always get it without anyone’s help.
This rule is important to follow for all parents, whether your child has any impairments or not.
3. Wait for your child to be motivated before you teach the way to request it
This right here is the most important rule! In order for communication to be taught functionally, your child has to want whatever you are teaching them, at the specific time you’re teaching it. In our example with the water, make sure your child is thirsty before teaching the request.
This rule is important to follow for all parents, whether your child has any impairments or not.
4. Never teach only one request at a time
Start by teaching a few (maximum of 5 or 6) requests simultaneously and make sure they are requests for your child’s favourite items/activities. Teaching one request at a time impacts on your child’s ability to discriminate between requests.
Let’s use the above-mentioned example of exchanging a picture of a glass filled with water for “water”.
If you’re only teaching this picture, your child will actually overgeneralise. They will start using that specific picture for all their needs and wants. This will lead to more frustration and using problematic behaviour (such as crying, screaming, whining) to gain access to whatever your child wants.
5. Make sure you’re teaching your child how to communicate under the guidance of a BCBA
Your BCBA will be able to shape both your behaviour to make you a better teacher and your child’s behaviour to make them a better learner.
Which strategy is better?
Applied Behaviour Analysis has always been based on research, and the teaching communication strategies mentioned in this article have been under serious scrutiny from the behavioural research community. Extensive research has shown that all four approaches are successful in teaching communication skills in the form of requesting wants and needs.
Some research has shown PECS to be faster at teaching requesting when compared to sign language (Moodie-Ramdeem, 2009, Barlow et al., 2013). This might be because PECS does not need many motor prerequisites or a lot of motor input to get access to the desired item/activity.
At the same time, sign language is more versatile and can be used in various social circumstances. Furthermore, research has shown that sign language also produces a higher level of vocalisations, when compared to PECS (Tincani, 2004).
Lastly, voice-generating apps have been proven to be as effective as PECS and sign language (Flores et al., 2012; Sigafoos et al., 2009).
Based on your preferences and your child’s abilities, together with your BCBA, you can find the best teaching approach for your child.
If you have any questions, please email me at andreeaistratebcba@gmail.com.
References:
Barlow, K. E., Tiger, J. H., Slocum, S. K., & Miller, S. J. (2013). Comparing acquisition of exchange-based and signed mands with children with autism. The Analysis of verbal behavior, 29(1), 59–69. https://doi.org/10.1007/BF03393124
Flores, M., Musgrove, K., Renner, S., Hinton, V., Strozier, S., Franklin, S., & Hil, D. (2012). A comparison of communication using the apple iPad and a picture-based system. AAC: Augmentative and Alternative Communication, 28(2), 74–84.
Jeff Sigafoos, Vanessa A. Green, Donna Payne, Seung-Hyun Son, Mark O’Reilly & Giulio E. Lancioni (2009) A Comparison of Picture Exchange and Speech-Generating Devices: Acquisition, Preference, and Effects on Social Interaction, Augmentative and Alternative Communication, 25:2, 99–109
Moodie-Ramdeen, T. (2009). Sign language versus picture exchange communication system in language acquisition in young children with autism. (Order No. AAI3339024, Dissertation Abstracts International Section A: Humanities and Social Sciences, 4632)
Sigafoos, J., Green, V. A., Payne, D., Son, S., O’Reilly, M., & Lancioni, G. E. (2009). A comparison of picture exchange and speech-generating devices: Acquisition, preference, and effects on social interaction. AAC: Augmentative and Alternative Communication, 25(2), 99–109.
Tincani, M. (2004). Comparing the Picture Exchange Communication System and Sign Language Training for Children With Autism. Focus on Autism and Other Developmental Disabilities, 19(3), 152–163.
