Brief Report: Randomized test of the efficacy of picture exchange communication system on highly generalized picture exchanges in children with ASD.
PECS creates picture-based requests that stick even with strangers and no eye contact.
01Research in Context
What this study did
Researchers randomly placed 36 preschoolers with autism into two groups. One group got PECS training right away. The other group got a different play-based program first.
Kids were tested later with new adults in a new room. The test used pictures the children had never seen before. No one asked them to look at faces or wait for eye contact.
What they found
Children who used PECS traded the new pictures far more often than the other children. They did this even though the adult never demanded eye contact.
The gains showed up in a place and with people the kids had never met.
How this fits with other research
Doherty et al. (2018) took the next step. They showed that PECS also works child-to-child. After short prompting and fading, preschoolers with autism both asked peers for toys and answered peer requests.
Gotham et al. (2015) got similar fast gains, but with spoken scripts instead of pictures. Their children also talked more to peers without extra training.
Cappadocia et al. (2012) found parent training helped too. When parents learned to respond right away, their kids spoke more and autism scores dropped. All three studies line up: teach a clear exchange, and communication grows.
Why it matters
You do not need to wait for eye contact or quiet hands. Start PECS early and the child can begin requesting in days. Test the skill with new staff and new pictures to be sure it traveled. If the learner later moves to speech, the same exchange frame is already there.
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02At a glance
03Original abstract
A randomized control trial comparing two social-communication interventions in young children with autism examined far-transfer of the use of picture exchange to communicate. Thirty-six children were randomly assigned to one of two treatment conditions, one of which was the Picture Exchange Communication System (PECS). All children had access to picture symbols during assessments. Post-treatment measurement of the number of picture exchanges in a far-transfer, assessment context favored the PECS intervention. These findings were interpreted as support for the hypothesis that the PECS curriculum can successfully teach a generalized means of showing coordinated attention to object and person without requiring eye contact to children with ASD.
Journal of autism and developmental disorders, 2010 · doi:10.1007/s10803-009-0897-y