“There is a considerable body of research in which total communication was compared with speech alone and/or with manual signing alone to teach receptive and/or expressive vocabulary to children with autism who had limited or no functional speech.  In general, the results of these studies suggest...

In my last article I examined two widely-held myths regarding language and communication which I referred to as part of speech-language pathology’s “folk lore”. Myth #1 had to do with taking the act of speaking for granted, based upon the fact that since so many people are able to speak effortlessly,...

This article examines speech-language pathology’s “folk lore” – the commonly held myths about language communication that all too often stand in the way of student progress in this critically important area of development. Myth #1: Talking must be easy since so many people do it so effortlessly. Nothing...

I adapted Rapid Fire Improvisation from a method I learned in a speaker’s boot camp in the mid-1990s. The purpose of the boot camp was to improve skills as a public speaker. Our instructor would select an object or thing in the room and we would speak about the object as quickly as possible, saying...

Many years ago Charles Hart, author of Without Reason: A Family Copes with Two Generations of Autism, shared a story about his son Ted that gave me a window both on the social / communication problems that are hallmark features of autism spectrum disorders (ASD), and their relationship to theory of mind....