The last week of November 2008 was amazing to say the least. We underwent training by Dr.Patricia Wright (a behaviour analyst and an expert in the field of AAC with innumerable years of experience in the field of autism).She has been reiterating the importance of AAC while working with children with Autism. So what is A.A.C? It stands for augmentative and alternative communication. It is any tool that is used to compensate verbal language by the use of pictures, voice output devices, sign language.
Large populations of children diagnosed with ASD are non verbal while the others may have significant communication drawbacks.One of the core deficits of autism is communication difficulties. By communication I don’t mean just spoken language. It may mean inability to even understand or use non verbal communication such as gestures.
P.E.C.S (Picture exchange communication system) is a very popular tool that we use while teaching these children how to communicate via pictures. When a child (with obvious communication difficulties) comes to us initially for assessment and we tell the parents their child may need to be trained using P.E.C.S…….99.9% of the parents are not too happy at all. Their common concerns are-
My child has few words, so if we put him on P.E.C.S will that tamper his normal language development?
Answer: - Absolutely not, infact it may just enhance the possibility of the child developing verbal language.
Apart from P.E.C.S the other modes of Augmentative communication are individualized communication boards, communication devices such as the Big Mack, super talker Etc.
Finally I would like to add that …yes it is wonderful to have our children verbally communicating their needs. But what if they have a deficit in that area? Do we wait or do we teach them other modes of communication? RIGHT NOW the child has so much to say so why wait…..lets just give him the appropriate tools so he could communicate to the world!
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