Brief report: an evaluation of total communication vs vocal alone for teaching tacts

Abstract

Total Communication (TC) and Vocal Alone (VA) are two teaching approaches used to facilitate vocal responding with children with language delays and autism. TC involves the simultaneous use of the manual sign and the spoken word. VA involves the use of the spoken word only. This single subject study aimed to compare the two approaches using an alternating treatment design to find which condition produced the most effective acquisition rate of vocal tacts for an echolalic child with autism. We also examined the effect of condition on speech articulation on targeted items and the child’s listener behaviour (selection) following tact only (speaker) training. An in depth phonological assessment was carried out pre test and the subject’s vocal utterances phonetically transcribed over the course of the study by a speech and language therapist (SALT). Results indicated that the TC condition produced six times more vocal tacts than the VA condition; results from the listener behaviour tests showed the subject was able to respond appropriately when given both the vocal and sign, but not with the vocal stimulus alone. The phonetic transcription yielded inconclusive results but indicated ways that such information could be used more effectively in future research.