Communication deficits are a core symptom of ASDs. While some children with ASDs are completely nonverbal, others are able to develop sufficient communication skills to both understand language and express themselves effectively. Considering the range of language abilities, most children with ASDs require intervention to help further their communication skills.

The article summarized here reviews all experimental research on communication interventions in the last 20 years with children with autism. The communication interventions discussed in the review focused on improving deficits in various speech and language domains, including comprehension and expression, and the social use of language.

Conclusions:

• There are effective intervention strategies available to teach communication skills to children with ASDs.
• These interventions include total communication (speech and sign language together), discrete trial training, and milieu training.
• Teaching communication skills can be helpful in reducing disruptive behaviour and increasing social interactions.
• All effective interventions rely on components of basic learning theory. Goal setting, the use of appropriate reinforcements, modeling, prompts, and discussions about generalizability are considered major components.
• All interventions focus on specific aspects of communication (e.g., single word vocabulary, phrases, sentences).
• So, we cannot, for example, assume that an intervention that measured changes in vocabulary will work equally well when trying to teach phrase speech.
• No single intervention is sufficiently comprehensive to teach all the skills needed for effective communication.

Recommendations:

• Researchers conducting these studies need to describe their strategies more clearly.
• Better descriptions will help to make comparisons between studies easier. It will also make it easier to replicate studies and to mix and match strategies for more comprehensive interventions.
• Variables such as treatment intensity and frequency have yet to be studied. It is unknown whether these variables affect outcome.
• More research is required to determine the most appropriate order in which to teach skills and how best to teach advanced communication skills.
• Research needs to guide clinicians who need to individualize intervention plans to meet the needs of children.
• Research should identify the characteristics of the children for whom the intervention was least and most effective.
• Research needs to continue looking at how best to generalize intervention effects.