Effects of altering communicative input for students with autism and no speech: Two case studies

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Abstract
Individuals with autism and severe mental retardation typically display deficits in both communicative input and communicative output skills. Comprehension of spoken input may be particularly challenging for individuals with autism, for a number of reasons. This paper presents two case studies examining the impact of varying the form of communicative input on behavior management targets as well as performance on an object identification task. Both cases involved students with autism and no speech. One student responded with poor task performance and high frequencies of self-injury to spoken communication but not to gestures alone or gestural plus spoken communication. The other student displayed a similar pattern of task performance and showed an increased tendency toward disruptive behavior in response to spoken or spoken plus gestural communication only in high-stress situations. Program modifications (changes in the communication approaches of these students' communicative partners) are described. It is suggested that the impact of spoken communicative input on task performance and behavior management targets of individuals with autism be probed in cases where more straightforward programming issues have been addressed with only limited success.

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