A integração da comunicação alternativa e ampliada através do protocolo Picture Exchange Communication System PECS® no aumento da frequência de mandos em um aluno com transtorno do espectro autista.

Abstract

Some children with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) included in child education classes in regular schools are considered non-verbal. Some use gestures to compensate the absence of speech, but this communication through gestures is not always contextualized, causing many children to have disruptive behaviors. In this context, the communication skills of these individuals can benefit from the use of the Picture Exchange Communication System – PECS®, an alternative communication system. The main goal of this study was to analyze the contribution of the PECS® protocol in the communication of an Autistic non-verbal child inserted in a child education class of a normal municipal school analyzing if its implementation in a clinical context provided the increase in verbal and non-verbal commands of the participant in school and made it easier to generalize the commands to other school contexts as well as with different communication partners. Besides this, the teacher´s perception in relation to the student´s interaction/ communication and behavior was evaluated pre and post intervention. Methodology: an almost experimental single case research (A-B) design was used, where the collections where realized during the Baseline and Intervention phases. The participant of this research was a 2 year 4 months old child, enrolled in a child education class, at a regular school. The PECS® application protocol was realized in a clinical context and the data collection was done in two different places in the school, which included the classroom with the teacher and other classmates, and in another classroom with the mother and researcher. Data about the teacher´s perception were collected using a questionnaire. Results: an increase in verbal commands without significant changes between the phases observed. Nevertheless, there was an expressive difference in the use of non-verbal commands with figures in school, inferring the student was able to appropriate himself of the protocol and had an increase in the frequency of commands with the help of the figures. Conclusion: this study supplies some empiric data that supports the use of PECS® as an Alternative and Enlarged Communication Protocol practicable and promising to be used with Autistic children in regular school context. There is a need of realizing more studies about this subject, with the implementation and involvement of the teacher, a larger number of participants and more robust experimental designs in order to, indeed, demonstrate the efficiency and applicability of PECS® to help the communication and interaction of Brazilian Autistic children in child education classes and inclusive.