Indução de comportamento vocal em Crianças com autismo

Abstract

Deficiencies on verbal and symbolic behavior are central to Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD). In this way, procedures like stimulus-stimulus pairing (SSP) are used to produce verbal behavior in individuals with limited repertoires. The present study aimed at evaluating the effects of SSP in the establishment and/or strengtheing of vocal responses in ten children diagnosed with ASD and limited vocal repertoire. The procedure consisted in ten sessions in which one target syllable was paired with high-preference item and another syllable served as control. The results point to the effectiveness of the procedure in inducing and strengthening vocal responses in children with diferent repertoires. The rate of the target response increased due to the pairing of the sound with the high-preference item for most of the children, even when initial response rate was zero. The evaluation of the temporal profiles showed that each child has his or her specific profile, be it after the target sound of after the control sound. We hope that our data on response profiles can help to improve verbal-behavior teaching methods for people with difficulties.