Remediating
Echolalia in a
Child with Autism
Steven M. Schultz
Introduction
Modified Partial Models Method
(Sussman, 1999)
Treatment method to remediate echolalia
Attempts to reduce the quantity of echolalia
while simultaneously increasing the
meaningfulness of utterances
No criterion or mastery level
Theory: The speech of a verbal autistic child
speech can be shaped to increase its
communicative function.
Method
Participant
4 year, 2 month old female
Diagnosed with High Functioning Autism
Echolalia
Delayed language development
Verbal language using 2-3 word utterances
Poor eye contact
Social and play skills reported to be below
age expectations
Method
Materials:
Gluten/casein-free veggie chips
Gluten/casein-free cereal
Apple juice
Fruit leather
Banana chips
Rice crackers
METHODS
Procedures
hBaseline collected during weeks 1, 2 and 3
h Ex: child was asked, “ name , do you want chips?”
h Clinician paused and waited for response
h If no response or inappropriate response, question was repeated. If
appropriate, child was handed item
hIf child responded with echolalia, clinician used a carrier phrase in a
hierarchy of verbal imitation, verbal modeling and phonemic cueing. Ex: “I
want chips”, and waited for the child to repeat - verbal imitation. On the
next trial, the clinician would say, “I want ____,” and wait for the child’s
response. On the next trial, the clinician would say, “I w________,” and
wait for the child’s resonse. This would continue, if necessary, until the
child responded appropriately without cueing.
Research Design
h Single case design
h Generalization for untrained items probed weekly
RESULTS
Treatment Graph
MEANINGFULNESS RATIO Trend line
Shewart-chart trend line
120
100 Hello Time
P E R C E N TAGE
M E A N IN G F U L
Calendar Time
80
Snack Time
60
Linear (Snack Time)
40
Linear (Hello Time)
20
Linear (Calendar Time)
0
0 5 05 05 05 05 05 05 05 05
/4 1 1 / 1 8 / 2 5 / /1 / /8 / 1 5 / 2 2 / 2 9 /
/
10 10/ 10/ 10/ 11 11 11/ 11/ 11/
SESSION DATE
RESULTS
Level is higher in treatment, indicating a positive
change
Gentle slope in a positive direction for treatment
items
No generalization occurred across non-treated
items
Effect size = 1.2 (Robey, Shultz, Crawford, &
Sinner, 1999)
Binomial test = p-value .5
Child did not make statistically significant changes
in quantity of echolalia or meaningfulness of
utterances
DISCUSSION/CONCLUSION
Treatment program results were not what
clinician anticipated:
Clinically significant progress was made on treated
items: echolalia decreased and Meaningfulness ratio
increased.
Echolalia and meaningfulness were unpredictable
across all settings
Direction and Needs for Future Research
Treat child for all items/settings
Treat child in a one-on-one setting as opposed to
within a group setting
Treatment needs to be extended beyond 8-week
initial treatment period
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