Enabling a Prelinguistic Communicator with Autism to Use Picture Card as a Strategy for Repairing Listener Misunderstandings: A Case Study

The purpose of this case study was to examine the effects of a time-delay prompting procedure on the acquisition of skills for repairing multiple listener misunderstandings. A prelinguistic student with autism was taught to use picture cards as a strategy to repair listener misunderstandings in a setting where the student had to ask the listener to pick up a pen to paint a TV logo that was one of his preoccupations. The listener intentionally provided the student a pen with non-preferred attributions (brand, color, or size) to provide the student opportunities to repair the communication breakdown. The type and number of attributions misunderstood by the listener in a communication episode changed as the student met the predetermined criterion. Results of a changing-criterion design demonstrated that the intervention was effective in enabling the student to use picture cards in a way that took into consideration which attributions the listener misunderstood.