Child Turn Taking Essay

Most children have the ability to initiate joint attention, request their wants, and take turns. However, initiating joint attention, requesting, and turn-taking behavior are often significantly impaired in young children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). These three communicative behaviors have been linked to important developmental outcomes in children with ASD. It has been found that social reciprocity is one of the core deficits of autism, which has led some researchers to believe that improving turn taking and initiating joint attention may reduce the severity of ASD. Besides joint attention, requesting, and turn-taking, children will ASD generally have difficulty learning new skills. Kranner (1943) described ASD as an unusual condition characterized by social detachment, impaired social interactions, disturbances in language development, and rigidity and problems with change. There are three key areas of developmental problems in children diagnosed with ASD. These three key areas include: impairment in social interaction, severe delays or lack of language communication skills, and repetitive and stereotyped patterns of behavior. When working with children with ASD, the Responsively Prelinguistic Milieu Teaching (RPMT) and the Picture Exchange Communication System (PECS) …show more content…
PECS enables these children to communicate with adults effectively. An adult is positioned in front of a child during PECS training to facilitate the picture-object exchange with the child. Another adult is positioned behind the child to physically prompt the student to pick up the picture of the object they want if the child does not do so, in order to obtain that actual object. The ultimate goal of PECS is for an individual using this approach, is to initiate functional communication across all setting with a variety of