Picture Exchange Communication System

The Picture Exchange Communication System (PECS) was developed at the Delaware Autistic Program (DAP) and was designed to teach young children to communicate in a social context (Bondy & Frost, 1994; Frost & Bondy, 2002). Using PECS, learners are taught to give a picture of a desired item to a communicative partner in exchange for the item. There are six phases of PECS instruction, with each phase building on the last. The phases are: (1) Teaching the physically assisted exchange, (2) Expanding spontaneity, (3) Simultaneous discrimination of pictures, (4) Building sentence structure, (5) Responding to, “What do you want?” and (6) Commenting in response to a question. Participants will be able to: Define Picture Exchange Communication System® Identify what skills to teach using PECS® Identify the steps for implementing PECS® Locate resources