Using a Music Therapy Collaborative Consultative Approach - World ...

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children with autism, regardless of their verbal and nonverbal skill to initiate communication
with others. Also based on a modified behavioral model, PECS teaches the child to approach
her or his communication partner by exchanging a picture symbol for the desired object or
activity. PECS is used within ongoing classroom routines and activities, and can function as
a bridge between learning to communicate and using independent speech.
Challenging behaviors. One of the most stressful issues faced by parents and
professionals in their efforts to include children with autism in preschool educational
programs are the exhibition of challenging behaviors such as “lack of compliance with or
disruption of classroom routines, tantrums, destruction of property, and aggression against
self or others” (National Research Council, p. 116). There is no single strategy that has
proved effective in reducing challenging behaviors in all children with autism. However,
there is a consensus that such problems should be addressed in the child’s early years, and
prevented before they occur, by strongly engaging the child in classroom activities (Darwson
& Osterling, 1997).
To reduce challenging behaviors, interventions vary from discrete trial, and
naturalistic behavior approaches such as pivotal response training and incidental teaching, to
developmental approaches, which recognize the needs of highly structured environments,
adult attention and consistency. Consequence-base approaches (with an applied behavioral
analysis theoretical framework) are the most empirically evaluated approaches, designed to
decrease or eliminate challenging behaviors (National Research Council, 2001). In pivotal
response training, children are given some control over their environments and are allowed