Comparison of Performance on Verbal and Nonverbal Multiple-Cue Responding Tasks in Children with ASD

Abstract

In this manuscript, we present data from an ongoing study of a tablet-based therapeutic application designed for newly diagnosed children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and modeled on language therapy, Applied Behavioral Analysis (ABA) and Pivotal Response Treatment (PRT), techniques known to be effective in educating children with ASD. We describe the creation of a variety of analogous tasks that were presented both verbally and nonverbally within the application. This work presents our hypothesis that children with ASD perform better when a command is presented nonverbally. This approach may have important implication for the most effective way of delivering early therapeutic interventions to children with ASD.