Construction of a Therapy program targeting Expressive language in non verbal autistic children

Abstract

Abstract Background Some autistic children remain non verbal even after receiving multiple interventions. There is no obvious cause can explain failure of those autistic children who have adequate cognitive ability and communicative intent to acquire spoken language, except childhood apraxia of speech (CAS) that is treated differently than autism. Little is written about specific therapy programs that apply CAS treatment strategies to promote speech production for non verbal autistic children. Purpose The aim of this work is to detect the effectiveness of a therapy program targeting expressive language for non verbal autistic children by applying CAS treatment strategies. Methods pre – post single subject design in which each child acts as his or her own control. All the twenty children included in the study had been received previous language therapy at least for 6 months before the starting of the study with no improvement in verbal output. Results Of the twenty children enrolled in this study, eighteen children developed spoken language at least multiple single words used both during therapy session and at home. Conclusion a structured conversational language therapy program that apply CAS treatment strategies can help non verbal autistic children to acquire expressive language.