Intro to Communication

1. Intro to Communication Ann N. Garfinkle, PhD

2. Overview of Communication • We do it all our waking hours • Tied to other skills/behaviors

3. Overview Of Communication Communication Speech

4. Deficits in Communication Skills in Adutswith ASD • Issues related to independence • Issues related to compliance

5. A range of effective behavioral strategies • Lovass vs Baer

6. What’s naturalistic? • Teaching in everyday environments • Naturally occurring • Interest-based • Adults contingently respond

7. Why naturalistic? • Leads to more overall communicative behavior • Easily implemented by parents • Increases relationships

8. General ways to increase expressive language • Model how to communicate • Model new words in context • Model building words into sentences • Model the basis for narratives and stories • Model words for emotion and regulatioj • Provide opportunities to talk • Provide meaningful feedback for talking • Teach social skills • Teach expanded vocabularly

9. Also • Repeating, expanding and recasts • Decreased questions • RESPONSIVITY

10. Specific Types of Naturalistic Strategies • Incidental Teaching • Time Delay • Environmental manipulation • (Milieu teaching)

11. Milieu teaching • A set of tools to facilitate child’s communication • Setting up an interactive context between the adult and child through play and routines • Noticing and responding to child communication and balancing turns • Model and expanding play • Modeling and expanding communication • Using time delay • Using prompting stratgies

12. MT can: • Increase the rate of communication • Increase the diversity of communication • Increase the complexity of communication • Increase the child’s independence through spontaneous communication and decrease dependence on adult cues

13. Strategy 1: Engage • Develop a platform of joint attention and engagement through social interaction and engagement • Be at the person’s level • Do what the person is doing • Follow the person’s lead • Avoid directions and let the adult interact • Avoid questions and let the adult initiate • Choose interesting and engaging activities

14. Strategy 2: Notice and Respond to Communication • Notice and respond every time the adult communicates; respond by talking about what the adult is doing. Language needs to relate to what the adult is doing to be meaninful.

15. Strategy 3: Take Turns • Allow the adult time to communicate and take balanced turns • Only say something after the adult communicates

16. Strategy 4: Mirror and Map • Mirroring—adult imitates the client’s non-verbal behaviors • Mapping—adults lays language onto these actions by describing them

17. Strategy 5: Model and Expand • Extend the time a adult interacts with materials • Expand the different actions the adult does with the same materials • Expand the types of materials the adult uses

18. Strategy 6: Model and Expand Language • People learn language through modeling • Contingent modeling is the most powerful form • Simplifying language to match the clients' language targets help client learn language more quickly

19. Strategy 7: Expanding Communication • An expansion is imitating the client and adding a little bit more • The most powerful expansion includes the clients’scommunication targets

20. Strategy 8: Environmental Arrangement • EA provides the client with more opportunities to practice communicating (that aren’t directly initiated by an adult) • Set up the environment to: • Offer choices • Pause within a routine • Wait • Inadequate portions • Ask for help

21. Strategy 9: Prompt Language • A prompt is a signal to the client to do or say something • 4 language prompts from least to most support are: • Time delay • Open questions • Choice questions • Model procedures