Effects of an Augmentative and Alternative Communication Intervention Package on Socio-Communicative Behaviors Between Minimally Speaking Autistic Children and Their Peers.

Purpose: The purpose of this study is to investigate the effectiveness of an augmentative and alternative communication (AAC) intervention package consisting of systematic instruction and aided modeling with speech-output technologies on the acquisition, maintenance, and generalization of socio-communicative behaviors--initiating a request for a turn, answering questions, and commenting--in four, minimally speaking (MS) autistic children between the ages of 6 and 9 years. Method: A multiple--probe design across behaviors replicated across participants was implemented to evaluate the effects of systematic instruction and aided modeling on initiating requests for a turn, answering questions, and commenting behaviors. Additionally, a pre- and posttreatment multiple-generalization-probes design was used to assess generalization across peers. Results: Visual analyses demonstrated experimental control for two participants (i.e., Derek, Ajay) showing a functional relationship between the intervention and outcomes across all social communicative behavior. For one participant (i.e., Matthew), experimental control could not be established because he did not reach the learning criterion for commenting. The fourth participant (i.e., John) transferred to a different school after making some progress on requesting. Effect size indicator analyses corroborated these findings, indicating medium-to-strong effects for initiating requests for a turn strong effects for answering questions, and medium-to-strong effects for commenting. Generalization of socio-communicative behaviors from researcher to a typically developing peer was variable across participants. Participants maintained socio-communicative behaviors 3 weeks after the last intervention session with varying degrees of success. Conclusion: The outcomes of this study suggest that aided modeling and systematic instruction using speech-output technologies may lead to gains in socio-communicative behaviors in some MS autistic children. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]