Individualized Education Plan Ecdriesbaugh IEP

Individualized Education Plan Ecdriesbaugh

IEP Article Reviews

The ability to communicate is one of the most fundamental of human skills -- it is vital for our survival. Any time people communicate, they attempt to connect in some way. Communication is how people share knowledge, thoughts, viewpoints, feelings, emotions, and ideas with other people. Effective communication brings people together; therefore, it is vitally important that intervention of communication disorders in children be corrected as early as possible. The review articles chosen for this paper concern autism and problems with communication receptivity.

Billy Ogletree implies that autism can be detrimental to the child's social interaction; therefore, a successful communication intervention must be socially valid. Practitioners should be able to observe definite improvements in the child's social skills in order to deem the intervention as a "meaningful outcome." One illustration is whether or not the intervention resulted in more birthday party invitations (Ogletree, 2007).

According to Ogletree, successful interventionists should utilize proven treatment techniques from a variety of treatment methodologies. The author implies that practitioners have been using the same treatment techniques for years (modeling, shaping, time delay, and reinforcement), but over the years interventionists have expanded the efforts to be less prescriptive by applying these techniques differently. For example, traditional treatment strategies are used in a more constricted and controlled manner than in more recently developed Social Communication, Emotional Regulation, and Transactional Support models (Ogletree, 2007).

Ogletree implies that communication impairments in ASD should be addressed with as much flexibility as possible with the pursuit of spontaneous communication, response to behavior, and peer-partner participation as the primary goals. This variety provides choices for practitioners to tailor interventions for both child and family. For example, a child who displays visual preferences instead of verbal preferences may be a good candidate for the Picture Exchange Communication System. However, Ogletree warns that prior to making any determinations concerning treatment choices and applications, interventionists should consult the options in the National Research Council (2001) and ASHA (2006) guidelines. Doing so offers informed choices that are more likely to result in successful outcomes (Ogletree, 2007).

The second article for review concerns receptive problems in communication disorders. According to Dr. Mel Levine, communication disorders in children may stem from difficulties with information reception and expression. Levine states that receptive problems lie in the ability to interpret language. These children often speak well but have difficulty in comprehending what is being said to them. Casual conversations come easily, but the receptive problems reveal themselves in school. For example, they can't express themselves when asked to write a book report or interpret a story or poem out loud (Macready, 2004).

Research shows that the language center in the brain expands in early adolescence. Children's speech should become more sophisticated -- tightly packed with information with abstract ideas increasing more and more. But not every child will move into this stage of development. The author suggests a test for identifying receptive problems in communication. One suggestion is to ask the child to give two different meanings for one ambiguous sentence. For example, "It is too cold to play." Students with higher language discrepancies may only be able to determine one meaning, not be able to comprehend that one sentence can have two different meanings, or not understand the question at all (Macready, 2004).