Academic Engagement of Minimally Verbal Children with ASD At School

Background:   Approximately 30-40% of children with autism remain minimally verbal (fewer than 20 functional words) despite receiving years of interventions and a range of opportunities.  Very little is known about these individuals as they are often excluded from research studies due to limited language or cognitive ability.  Thus, we are limited in our knowledge of the academic engagement, communication and literacy development of these children in school settings where they presumably spend the most time.

Objectives: The current studies examined the task engagement and communication of minimally verbal children (between 5 and 8 years) while at school.

Methods: Study 1: Eighteen participants screened for a larger intervention study for minimally verbal children with autism were observed in their classroom for two hours during their morning routines. The majority of children were observed in self-contained special education classrooms on general education campuses; 2 were observed in a general education classroom, and 1 in a special education school.  Within subjects repeated measures with simple contrasts were conducted to compare differences within child engagement states, communicative partners and type of classroom instruction. Study 2: Four participants were included in an alternating treatment, multiple baseline design of an adapted shared reading paradigm in which task engagement was tracked.

Results: Study 1:  Children were unengaged from classroom activities for a majority of observations (M= 41.2%).  This time was significantly different from time jointly engaged (M= 18.2%), object engaged (M= 12.5%), onlooking (M= 10.8%), or person engaged (M= 0.6%).  Children’s primary communicative partner was a classroom aide (M= 43.7%), whom they communicated with a significantly greater percentage of the observation than no communicative partner (M= 20.3%), teacher (M= 11.9%) or peers (M= 1.0%).  In terms of academic instruction, children spent significantly more class time on break (M= 34.2%) than whole group instruction (M= 19.8%) one-on-one instruction (M= 17.6%), small groups (M= 8.2%), and independent work (M= 3.4%).  During the 2-hour observation, children initiated an average of 69 bids for communication, while classroom staff initiated an average of 339 bids. Children and classroom staff responded to a similar number of bids (46.2% and 46.4%, respectively). Study 2:  In a multiple baseline, alternating treatment design, four participants showed increased task engagement during teacher –led adapted shared reading activities compared with standard shared reading (see figure).  Adapted activities included visual supports as well as embedded objects and teachers employed strategies to increase student engagement. 

Conclusions: Minimally verbal children with autism in school spend little time engaged in meaningful academic or social activities.  However, when engaged in a shared reading paradigm, they show increased story comprehension and joint engagement. Thus, these types of interventions should find their way into the classroom practice for this underserved population of children.