Article Review About the Picture Exchange Communication System (PECS)
[Image Description: "PECS HAS GIVEN OVER 100,000 PEOPLE A VOICE. -WEST SUSSEX COUNTY COUNCIL" in center-aligned white letters on a black letter board laying on a red, yellow, blue, and purple quilt as the background.]
CONTENT WARNING: I would like to mention that I am not a medical doctor, psychologist, psychiatrist, or therapist and I am sharing this content for educational purposes only. Social media should never be used as a substitute for mental nor medical health care. If you suspect that your child is experiencing any developmental concerns, it is okay to get help, and I highly recommend seeking help from a medical doctor, psychologist, therapist, and/or other professional who is qualified to do so.
For my Fieldwork in Education course that I took in my last semester at Bucks County Community College, I had to read an article of the Picture Exchange Communication System (PECS) and write an essay reviewing the article by summarizing it in my own words as a brief description of the study and the results. In addition, I had to critique the article about its usefulness, ease of understanding, relationship to the Autism Support classroom that I was completing my practicum lab fieldwork experience in, and the importance of this line of research when working with students with autism or autism spectrum disorder/autistic students/students on the autism spectrum. As usual, when it comes to my school assignments that are relevant to my influencer page content, I have decided to upload this essay as a blog post.
In my preschool Autism Support classroom, not all but the majority of students utilized PECS. As stated in the article, "one hallmark feature of children with autism is deviant or delayed speech and language skills" and I would say that this was the case as to why the students in my classroom used PECS; they were either nonverbal or struggled with communicating verbally so they used PECS as an accommodation (Christy, Carpenter, Le, LeBlanc, & Kellet 2002). The other educators and I referred to PECS as "words" to the children and when it was time for them to use PECS, we instructed them to "grab your words." The children practiced using PECS at meal time; for the children who used PECS on iPads, they would click on the food that they wanted and for the children that used PECS books, they would set up the visuals that communicate their desires and needs on the front of the book following pointing to each visual to communicate to us. For example, if a child wanted to eat cookies, they would click the "cookies" visual or put the visuals for "I want cookies" on the front of the book. After clicking or pointing to each visual, we served them one portion of the snack at a time. According to the article, "several informational reports have suggested that a large number of children who learn PECS also develop spoken language"; I definitely witnessed this happen in my classroom. One day when my lead mentor teacher asked a child who used PECS due to their limited verbal language if they wanted to lift the next flap in a book, they verbally said, "Yes" and this was an achievement that all of us were proud to see happen. In regards to other similar helpful communication methods, gestures and prompts helped all of my students as another type of communication suggested in the article.
I agree with the researchers' study results about PECS as shown in the article. I agree that PECS can potentially help some autistic individuals/individuals with autism or ASD/individuals on the autism spectrum eventually develop verbal language with encouragement and without force. As these individuals are using PECS, the other person working with them says the words that the individual points to or clicks on and even though the individual cannot speak verbally, they can hear the other person, which encourages them to imitate those skills. Even though some individuals with autism or ASD/autistic individuals/individuals on the autism spectrum cannot speak verbally, this does not mean that they cannot speak at all. PECS helps nonverbal individuals and individuals with limited verbal communication to communicate in a way that accommodates their learning differences and everyone needs some method of communication as this is a major key life skill.
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Citations
1. Charlop-Christy, M. H., Carpenter, M., Le, L., LeBlanc, L. A., & & Kellet, K. (2002). Using the Picture Exchange Communication System (PECS) with Children with Autism: Assessment of PECS Acquisition, Speech, Social-Communicative Behavior, and Problem Behavior. (pgs. 213-331). Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1284381/pdf/12365736.pdf
2. (2022). Picture Exchange Communication System (PECS) retrieved from https://westsussex.local-offer.org/services/242#:~:text=PECS%20Picture%20Exchange%20Communication,over%20100%2C000%20people%20their%20voice
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