Enabling a prelinguistic communicator with autism to use pictures as a strategy for repairing listener misunderstandings: A case study.

2011

Michael Wehmeyer
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785-864-0723

The purpose of this case study was to examine the effects of a time-delay prompting procedure on acquisition of skills for repairing multiple listener misunderstandings. We taught a prelinguistic student with autism to use picture cards as a strategy to repair listener?s misunderstandings in a setting where the student needed to ask the listener to pick up a pen to paint a preoccupied TV logo. The listener intentionally provided the student a pen with non-preferred attributions (brand, color, or size) to provide the student opportunities to repair communication breakdown. The type and number of attributions misunderstood by the listener in a communication episode was changed as the student met the predetermined criterion. The results of a changing criterion design demonstrated that the intervention was effective in enabling the student to use picture cards in a way that takes into consideration which attributions the listener misunderstood.

Autism, Prelinguistic communication, Repair strategies

Peer-reviewed publications in scholarly journals Published/In Press

Professionals

Electronic (disc, CD, 508 compliant web posting)

[email protected]

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