Very Early Receptive Language

Are you teaching receptive vocabulary to pre-symbolic or minimally verbal children? Here are a few thoughts to consider.

When speech is a "not yet" skill for a prolonged time, communication is still vitally important. Children whose autism is accompanied by severe limitations in the understanding and use of spoken language and conventional gestures or manual signs, need to develop basic functional communication.?? Much of the emphasis is on expressive communication, of course, but building receptive language is also important.

Don't assume comprehension.

It is true that children developing language typically understand more language than they can use expressively, but developmentally young children with autism often are presumed to understand language without real evidence that they do. If team members judge comprehension based on clear, observable behaviors rather than on assumptions without evidence, they will be less likely to blame the child for noncompliance when the actual problem is non-comprehension. For the child's sake, and for realistic planning, it is better if you are a bit skeptical and consider that he might not have understood.? Assume potential but assess competence.

Understanding simple instructions and recognizing the names of common objects can increase safety, help the child understand his environment, and promote recognition of communication as a two-way street.

?Seven-year-old Arnie does not speak or reliably respond to the speech of others. His goals of learning to come, give, and wait are beginning to ease safety concerns, but vigilant supervision is still a must. Learning the names of objects he sees frequently and action verbs like "put", "take" and "give" will support his knowledge of the world, his life skills and interactions, and his educational progress.

Use errorless learning when possible

?????????????? Suppose you want Arnie to look at four common objects on the table and give you the one you name. ???If you ask him to "Give me the shoe" four times and three of those times he gives you a different object, he has practiced being wrong three out of four times and was perhaps only correct the other time by chance.? So, he has heard you say "shoe" while he is looking at a spoon or cup or whatever incorrect item he gave you. Even if you stop and correct him each time, he is more likely to be confused than if he just gets it right the first time he hears it.

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But if you show him another shoe, or picture of a shoe, to match with the one you are ?requesting, he is much more likely to be correct.? If he is not, you help him reach for the right one and you say “Shoe” as you request it, as he reaches for it, and as you receive it. By responding correctly, even with all that help, he has seen a shoe while hearing the word "shoe" at least three times, increasing the chances that he will learn the word and become able to respond without the visual cue.? And if he doesn't learn the spoken word but progresses to selecting the correct item when shown just a picture of it, he will be developing an understanding that a picture cue can be used to help him interpret a message.? This too is a very valuable communication skill.

Prompt non-verbally.

When a person does not understand language well, hearing more of it is not always helpful. ??Fewer words, supported by a gentle nudge or other physical prompt, will often be more effective than multiple repetitions or rewording of messages. Some people talk more and faster when attempting to calm a child who is upset, confused or uncooperative. Try not to be one of those people.

Nonverbal prompting is also important in developing independence for activities such as hand washing, exchanging or activating a request symbol, or eating with a spoon, because it is more easily faded than verbal prompts. You can gradually decrease non-verbal prompts from full assistance to partial help, to just a nudge on an elbow as the child becomes more independent.

There’s more to do, of course.

Find other ideas on teaching early comprehension, as well as expressive communication for these students? in Chapters 2, 3, and 4 of my first book, Building Communication and Independence for Children Across the Autism Spectrum: Strategies to Address Minimal Language, Echolalia and Behavior ?EIF Book link

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