Transtorno do espectro autista severo e Sistema de Comunicação por troca de Figura (PECS): aquisição e generalização de operantes verbais e extensão para habilidades sociais

Abstract

Among the difficulties present in frames Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) are deficits in social skills (SS) and different types of behavior problems (BP). The Picture Exchange Communication System (PECS) is a program that takes verbal behavior analysis Skinner and assists in acquiring verbal operant, enabling a functional communication and can facilitate social interactions and reduce competitive behavior problems. Art for the state's definition of interventions in SS and ASD, a systematic review of literature was carried out from 2009 to 2013. The results showed the importance of developing SS in individuals with ASD and the need to develop effective procedures for children with severe ASD, since most of the studies was carried out with mild ASD. Considering the shortcomings of the studies reviewed, the goal of study 02 was to implement and evaluate a teaching program of verbal operant with all phases of PECS for a ten year old with severe ASD, in addition to checking the spread between three environments (clinic, school and home) via a design with multiple baseline characteristics between multiple probes and environments. Prior to the teaching program and the end of each phase of PECS, in all environments, probes were conducted with discrete trial to evaluate the learning of the tasks required in each phase. The teaching program followed the instructions in the manual PECS and operationalization of hits criteria developed by the researcher. The data obtained from the surveys of discrete trial of the tasks of PECS phases were grouped into figures with the child hit percentages at each session. The child had learning criterion for all Phases of PECS and kept 100% accuracy in all phases, including the Follow up except Attributes and Phase VI. After successive polls the child also showed generalization between the three environments. The aim of the study was 03 to assess the effects of this educational program with the PECS in the repertoire of SS and BP participating child. To this end, in addition to the study of the procedure 02, they were conducted preand post-intervention measures with an interview about SS and BP with the mother and child's teacher. In addition to the child's filming in natural situations in all polls conducted during the study 02. These recordings were analyzed in relation to the frequency of SS and BP during the baseline and implementation of the teaching program. The behaviors were classified shot directly taught SS, or verbal operands and SS who were not trained directly to check the side effects of PECS. The interview data of pre and post-test were analyzed for frequency of SS and BP according to the following scales: often, sometimes and never. The results showed gains in SS repertoire and BP reduction in the three environments, especially at home. It was concluded that the child has learned the verbal operant taught by PECS, he learned new classes of social skills and reduced behavioral problems. Limitations will be appointed for each study.