7.1 Pre-school Autism Communication Therapy (PACT)

The PACT approach trains parents to work on enhancing the communication and language development skills of their own children, commencing as early as possible after diagnosis (Green et al., 2010). Parents view video footage of their interactions with their child and are taught to adapt their own communications in order to respond with enhanced sensitivity and responsiveness, for instance using eye gaze, sharing, showing and giving to increase shared attention. Parents learn to tailor their language use to the child’s level of understanding and to facilitate child communication and participation, for instance through sequences of actions, repeated verbal scripts and the use of elaborations, pauses, and playful teasing.