The Picture Exchange Communication System (PECS) is a structured behavioral program often used with nonverbal and lower-functioning verbal children with autism, which uses a catalog of pictures to encourage communication. PECS is a training course that teaches a child to make a request, respond to questions, and make comments. The model allows children to select a picture of something they want, and then exchange the picture for the actual object depicted on the picture card. For example, a child could select a card that says, “I want,” and then select another card that has a picture of a candy bar. He would then hand over the two cards to the partner he is communicating with, and the partner would give him the candy bar. As children become more comfortable communicating in this fashion, they start to gain the ability to put pictures and symbols together to develop simple sentences, and eventually flowing speech.

 

The picture cards should be made personal, and should depict objects that refer to specific things in a child’s life. This can be done by creating a list of familiar objects in the child’s life (food, toys, other things the child owns). These pictures can easily be drawn by a parent onto a 3x5 note card, or they can be printed from the computer. To save some time, parents should look towards cutting images out of magazines or picture books. There are a number of programs on the World Wide Web that allow access to a number of generic pictures and descriptive symbols that a child could relate to. Warning: Some of the programs are free and others are not (see bottom of this page).

 

One common use of the PECS is to draw picture cards for each aspect of a child’s daily schedule, which explain the sequence of events for each day.   Another common and very useful technique which parents can implement is to attach illustrations of their child’s favorite types of food to the refrigerator, and instruct their child to point to the picture of the food(s) that he would like to eat during meal times. Or the child can request the food by pulling the pictures of the food he wants off the refrigerator and hand it to the parent.   

 

In the beginning, a child should work with two people; one is the communication partner, and the other should encourage the child to select the symbols and hand them over to the communication partner. There are no prerequisites to the Picture Exchange Communication program, and over 80% of the children on the program developed greater speech capabilities.

 

[Dodd, Susan. Understanding Autism. Australia: Elsevier, 2005. pp.26-27]