Autism Therapy: mand training

This paper describes the effectiveness of a speech therapy approach that can be especially useful for children who are having difficulties making their first sounds.

Research suggests that if a child is encouraged to quickly imitate motor behavior, then they may be more receptive to independently requesting an item through vocalization (mand). This paper reports the results of a study to determine whether using motor imitation before modeling speech is effective in teaching speech. In other words, is it helpful to first have a child mimic grunts and sounds before actually attempting to mimic speech? The generalized motor imitation tactic was combined with mand training procedures. The result of the study was that five elementary school-aged children could be taught to vocalize when instruction began with a generalized motor imitation sequence. Specifically, all participants were able to learn to imitate modeled sounds and independently use speech to request items (mands).