PECSThe Picture Exchange Communication System (PECS) was developed in 1985 by Lori Frost and Andy Bondy in response to their difficulty in successfully using a variety of communication training programs with young students with autism. PECS was originally developed for use with preschool-aged children with Autism Spectrum Disorder and other communicative disorders who displayed no functional or socially acceptable speech. By this, the creators of PECS meant that these children did not speak at all, spoke only in a "self-stimulatory" manner, spoke only when prompted to do so, or were extremely echolalic. These childrens communicative difficulties are socially-related in that the children do not routinely approach others to communicate (or initiate), they actively avoid interaction with others, or only communicate in response to a direct cue to do so. Children using PECS first learn to approach and give a picture of a desired item to a communicative partner in exchange for that item. By doing this, the child initiated a communicative act for a concrete outcome within a social context. The PECS training protocol is based on research and practice in the principles of Applied Behavior Analysis. Distinct teaching strategies, reinforcement strategies, error correction strategies, and generalization strategies are essential to use to teach each skill. The PECS training protocol also closely parallels typical language development in that it first teaches the child "how" to communicate or what the basic rules of communication are. Then the children learn to communicate specific messages. Children using PECS learn to communicate first with single pictures, but later learn to combine pictures to learn a variety of grammatical structure, semantic relationships, and communicative functions. |
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