Strengthening Gestures: A Critical Component to Building Robust Communication Skills for Autistic Children becomes clinically important the moment a team has to turn good intentions into reliable action inside language assessment, teaching sessions, caregiver coaching, and natural communication routines. In Strengthening Gestures: A Critical Component to Building Robust Communication Skills for Autistic Children, for this course, the practical stakes show up in clearer case conceptualization, better instructional targets, and stronger generalization, not in abstract discussion alone.
Provider: BehaviorLive — via The Verbal Behavior Conference
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Join Free →The use of gestures in early child development is highly related to the development of language and communication. Research has repeatedly shown that children who are later diagnosed with autism use fewer gestures to point things out to others (i.e., show and share) and to request things from others (i.e., mand). Recent research has shown that these differences can be seen even before 12 months of age. Given the altogether lower levels of gestures observed in children with autism and the important role they play in learning language and other important social interaction skills, early intervention programs should focus on developing gestures as foundational to building robust communication repertoires. This presentation will provide an overview of how gestures are related to language development, how providers may inadvertently diminish gestures, how to implement procedures to strengthen and improve gestures, and how to capitalize on gestures as an active ingredient in quality mand training for children diagnosed with autism.
| Certification Body | Credits | Type |
|---|---|---|
| BACB® | 1 | General |
| COA | 1 | — |
Alice Shillingsburg, PhD, BCBA-D, LP is Professor and Yale Family Endowed Chair at the University of Nebraska Medical Center. Dr. Shillingsburg also serves as Director of the integrated Center for Autism Spectrum Disorders (iCASD) at the Munroe-Meyer Institute for Genetics and Rehabilitation. She received her PhD in child clinical psychology at Auburn University and comple ted her APA Accredited doctoral Internship at the Marcus Institute in Atlanta, GA. In prior roles, she has served as Sr. Vice President of Children’s Clinical Services and Training at May Institute, Director of the Language and Learning Clinic at Marcus Autism Center, and previously held an appointment as Associate Professor at Emory University School of Medicine in the Department of Pediatrics. Dr. Shillingsburg’s research and clinical interests involve the development and implementation of comprehensive and focused interventions to promote robust, meaningful skill development for children and adolescents diagnosed with autism. Her clinical interests focus heavily on increasing access to high quality, compassionate care serving autistic individuals and their families. Dr. Shillingsburg has supervised numerous pre-doctoral and post-doctoral fellows and enjoys mentoring early career researchers and clinicians. She has published over 60 empirical research articles and book chapters, is current Editor-in-Chief of Operants Magazine, and is past Associate Editor for the Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis and The Analysis of Verbal Behavior. She is appointed to several editorial boards and is regularly invited to speak at national conferences.
Dig into the research behind this topic — plain-English summaries written for BCBAs.
280 research articles with practitioner takeaways
279 research articles with practitioner takeaways
258 research articles with practitioner takeaways
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