Augmentative Communication

Some children do not naturally develop language or begin to babble sounds in order to learn how to make words. With children diagnosed with Autism, this is often the case. However, these children often begin to form their own language and communicate in others ways with their parents and peers. This is called augmentative communication. In "Teaching Language to Children with Autism or other Developmental Disabilities," Sundberg and Partington discuss the ways in which children with Autism learn language and communicate with those around them.

It is important to encourage and reinforce when the child attempts to communicate with you in order to prevent the child from getting frustrated or from ceasing attempts to reach out. The four general options for selecting a form of communication for a specific child are 1) speech, 2) sign language, 3) picture pointing and exchange systems, and 4) independent writing, typing, or pointing to words.

Speech is the end goal; however, some children will need thousands of trials in order to build up their verbal repertoire. For children with strong to moderate motor imitation skills, sign language is a preferable way to learn language. Teachers can fade their prompts, they do not have to carry around a external object in order to talk to others and motor movements can actually increase language by the motion triggering the vocalization. Some advantages of the picture pointing and exchange systems are the listener does not have to have any special training in order to understand what the child is asking for, matching at first makes acquisition easier for the child and there is no shaping required. However, with this system, there is usually no improvement in speech.

It is important to build up a rapport with the child and complete an assessment in order to gauge exactly where the specific child's deficits lie. With this information in mind, a teacher can effectively choose what system to use and begin to effectively teach the child language.