Management of Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder using Picture Exchange Communication System - A Pilot Study
PECS across 24 short sessions taught five nonverbal preschoolers with autism to ask for things and cut parent-reported tantrums.
01Research in Context
What this study did
Reni and colleagues ran a small pilot with five nonverbal preschoolers who have autism.
A clinician delivered PECS across 24 short sessions. No control group was used.
Parents watched and later answered questions about tantrums and self-injury.
What they found
Every child learned to hand over pictures to ask for things without being told.
Parents said tantrums and SIB dropped after the training ended.
The gains showed PECS can kick-start communication in very young, nonverbal kids.
How this fits with other research
Leaf et al. (2012) pooled many PECS papers and found the same: preschoolers with autism move furthest when they finish more phases.
Ganz et al. (2009) proved parents can run PECS at home and still get new requests. Reni used a clinician, so the 2009 study widens your staffing options.
Koegel et al. (1992) cut disruptive behavior with naturalistic play instead of pictures. Both works agree: give kids an easy way to ask and problem behavior falls, whether you use play or PECS.
Why it matters
You now have two clear choices for nonverbal preschoolers: run PECS yourself or train parents. Either way, push through as many phases as possible. Expect fewer tantrums once the child can ask with pictures. Start PECS early and keep the momentum going.
Want CEUs on This Topic?
The ABA Clubhouse has 60+ free CEUs — live every Wednesday. Ethics, supervision & clinical topics.
Join Free →Run Phase I PECS exchanges for five trials, then track how many tantrums occur before and after the session.
02At a glance
03Original abstract
Aim: The aim of the study was to empirically assess the efficacy of Picture Exchange Communication System (PECS) in 5 children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). This study was also intended to report parental feedback on using PECS with their children.Method: Purposive convenient sampling was used for this quasi-experimental study. Five nonverbal children who were diagnosed with mild to moderate autism spectrum disorder with a median age of 4.1 years were selected for the study. All the five participants who exhibited limited or no functional communication skills were recruited for the study. Exclusion criteria included presence of any syndrome or any significant medical conditions such as seizures. The pre-assessment and the post assessments after 24 sessions of PECS training were done using selected communicative function domains. Post therapy parental feedback was obtained concerning five categories which are communication intent, attention, behavioural issues, vocalization and ease of communication. Also frequency of initiation as observed in home settings was obtained by interview method.Results: Current study shows that all the children were able to use PECS spontaneously and independently without any physical prompts. Children were able to generalize PECS at home with ease and were able to initiate communication on their own using the pictures. The mothers of the children reported that they observed a drastic subsidence in children’s challenging behaviours and also improvement in their attention span. The findings from our study showed that PECS training is effective in improving the socio-communication skills in children with ASD who had restricted communication. On analysing the report, mothers stated that they were able to easily incorporate PECS at home with their child as it implements the use of actual pictures for communicative exchange. As PECS training paves the way for expression of the child’s needs, there was also a significant reduction in the children’s behavioural problems such as tantrums and other self-injurious behaviours.Conclusion: From this study, it can be concluded that PECS training is effective in improving various communicative temptations in socio-communication skills in children with ASD who have restricted communication. It was also noted that obtaining parental feedback periodically would help in generalization and it encourages the parents’ involvement in the child’s learning process.
Indian Journal of Behavioural Sciences, 2022 · doi:10.55229/ijbs.v25i2.04