An investigation of the effects of a parent delivered stimulus-stimulus pairing intervention on vocalizations of two children with Autism Spectrum Disorder

Barry et al. (2019) asked two parents of nonverbal toddlers with autism to run a stimulus-stimulus pairing routine at home.

Each parent sat with their child for short daily sessions. They said fun vowel sounds and immediately gave a bite of favorite food or a quick tickle.

The team counted the children’s target vocal sounds before, during, and after the parent-led routine.

Both toddlers made more target sounds once parents paired the sounds with snacks or tickles.

Parents also said the routine was easy and worth doing, giving it high social-validity scores.

Vollmer et al. (1996) first showed the same pairing trick works with typical infants in a lab. Barry moves that lab idea into living rooms and shows it still helps children with autism.

Ishizuka et al. (2016) found adult imitation also boosts preschooler vocalizations. Together, the two studies tell us any clear adult vocal contingency—whether imitation or pairing—can start early speech in autism.

Llanes et al. (2020) and Hickey et al. (2024) prove parents can learn these vocal tools online or in person. Add Barry’s results and we see the delivery style matters less than giving parents a simple, repeatable action to do at home.

You can teach parents to run five-minute SSP sessions between meals and play. No extra staff, no clinic room, just a sound, a smile, and a bite of cookie. Try it during your next parent coaching call: model one paired sound, hand the parent the spoon, and watch vocalizations rise before you hang up.