JCPSLP Vol 14 No 2 2012

symbols. You can do your own research to determine which is more efficient – static versus animated symbols.

due to pre-treatment differences. The authors also provided adequate follow-up, certifying that sufficient data was available to support the results provided. The demonstration of PECS, a trained behaviour, in an untrained context is now supported by this research. This research is important for clinicians and families of children with autism, because it reassures us that PECS will generalise to different situations outside of the therapy room. This generalisation of a skill to the many changing situations and environments of everyday life is the ultimate goal of intervention. We can now feel confident using the PECS intervention with children with autism in a clinical setting because the learned skills will transfer to other environments as well, such as the client’s home. References Bondy, A. S., & Frost, L. A. (1994). PECS: The Picture Exchange Communication System training manual . Cherry Hill, NJ: Pyramid Educational Consultants. Mundy, P. C., Hogan, A. E., & Doehring, P. J. (1996). A preliminary manual for the abridged early social communication scales (ESCS) . Coral Gables, FL: University of Miami. Yoder, P. J., & Stone, W. L. (2006). Randomized comparison of twocommunication interventions for preschoolers with autism spectrum disorders. Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology , 74 , 426–435. Yoder, P. J., & Warren, S. F. (2002). Effects of prelinguistic milieu teaching and parent responsivity education on dyads involving children with intellectual disabilities. Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research , 45 , 1158–1174. Home-based intervention for children with autism McConkey, R., Truesdale-Kennedy, M., Crawford, H., McGreevy, E., Reavey, M., & Cassidy, A. (2010). Preschoolers with autism spectrum disorders: Evaluating the impact of a home-based intervention to promote their communication. Early Child Development and Care , 180 , 299–315. speechBITE rating 3/10 speechBITE review - Morin Beausoleil and Tricia McCabe At-home communication-based intervention approaches for children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) are common practice among parents and speech-language pathologists. But a couple of questions arise: how effective are these approaches? and, what developmental gains will the child make as a result of parental guidance and training? This article evaluated the effectiveness of home-based interventions to preschool children with a confirmed diagnosis of ASD. The study used an early intervention program called Keyhole, that was based on the Treatment and Education of Autistic and Related Communications Handicapped Children (TEACCH) approach (Schopler, Brehm, Kinsbourne, & Reichler, 1971), as well as two other approaches aimed at promoting communication and interaction between parent and child, such as the Picture Exchange Communication System (PECS) (Charlop-Christy, Carpenter, Le, Leblanc, & Kellet, 2002) and the Hanen “More than Words” program (Pepper & Weizman, 2004). The current study also looked at parental perceptions of the therapy design and the effect of this Keyhole program. The study included children from Northern Ireland between 2 and 4 years of age. Two speech-language

Generalisation of PECS training to other communication situations

Yoder, P. J., & Lieberman, R. G. (2010). Brief report: Randomized test of the efficacy of Picture Exchange Communication System on highly generalized picture exchanges in children with ASD. Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders , 40 , 629–632. speechBITE rating 6/10 speechBITE review – Caitlin Winkelman and Tricia McCabe Carry-over of learned skills and behaviours beyond the therapy room or training environment is the ultimate goal of speech and language intervention. Despite its worldwide recognition and extensive clinical use, there have been few studies investigating the generalisation of the Picture Exchange Communication System (PECS; Bondy & Frost, 1994). While some past research studying the efficiency of PECS has included generalisation measurements, these measures have failed to determine the extent to which PECS is generalised to contexts that are unlike the treatment conditions. The purpose of this study was to measure the “generality” of PECS, looking at whether the skill generalises to environments that are different from the environment where the behaviour was taught. The authors used a sample of children from a study by Yoder and Stone (2006) that compared two different communication interventions for children with autism. In this study, 33 children with autism and 3 with a diagnosis of pervasive developmental disorder were randomly assigned to two treatment groups. The inclusion criteria required that participants were between the ages of 18 and 60 months, used fewer than 10 words, and had passed a hearing screening. One group was assigned to receive the PECS intervention, while the control group received the Responsive Education and Prelinguistic Milieu Teaching (RPMT; Yoder & Warren, 2002). The children were assessed using four different measures before and after treatment; however, the measure specifically reported in this paper was the Early Social Communication Scales-Abridged (ESCS-Abridged; Mundy, Hogan, & Doehring, 1996). The authors claimed this measure was a good indicator of generalisation because the examiner, setting, activities, and materials were different from that of the treatment sessions. The dependent variable examined from pre-treatment to post-treatment was the total number of picture exchanges. The researchers found significant differences between pre- and post-treatment in the group that received the PECS intervention but not in the RPMT group. These findings suggest that the learned skill was generalised from the treatment context to the dissimilar context for those who received PECS, while there was not a strong indicator of generalisation for participants in the control group. These findings are supported by a research design with strong internal validity through randomisation, blinding, comparable groups at baseline, and adequate follow-up. As a randomised control trial, participants were randomly allocated to either the PECS or RMPT groups. The study also had blinded assessors, which prevents biased results, as well as strong comparability of groups at baseline, assuring us that the post-treatment differences were not

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JCPSLP Volume 14, Number 2 2012

Journal of Clinical Practice in Speech-Language Pathology