The Autism Society Event and Education Recordings Archive

Schools and therapists are increasingly responsible for meeting the needs of children with autism and other developmental disabilities that affect a child’s ability to verbally communicate. As the current literature states, up to 60% of children with autism do not have functional communication skills by high school. The challenge of schools and therapists, and the dream of parents, is providing these kids with a method of language expression. LAMP (Language Acquisition Through Motor Planning) is a therapeutic approach based on sensory integration and motor learning principles to give individuals who are non-verbal or have limited verbal abilities a method of independently and spontaneously expressing themselves in any setting. LAMP focuses on giving the individual independent access to vocabulary through AAC that is consistently accessed using the same motor plan. Vocabulary learned by the emerging communicator gradually builds into a system that meets the needs of the more advanced communicator without relearning of access methods and patterns along the way. This allows the communicator to develop automaticity in accessing their device, which is essential for spontaneous, novel utterance generation. The therapeutic and educational benefits of using a single system that begins with first words and progresses with the child’s advancing skills without relearning, re-purchasing and re-development are great. Not only does it make learning easier for the child, but it offers continuity throughout a child’s educational career and throughout a school system.

The primary principle of the LAMP approach is that the motor plan a person uses to utter a word cannot be changed once it is learned. In order to communicate effectively, a person has to be able to monitor his or her environment, listen to another speaker and follow the flow of the conversation. This cannot happen effectively if he or she has to cognitively attend to the icons, categories and locations of vocabulary on his or her device. It is difficult to cognitively attend to several things at once. Therefore, our brain develops motor plans to control movements that we use over and over again so that they may occur automatically.  Examples, of activities that we use motor plans for everyday include typing, handwriting, tying shoes and certain aspects of driving a car. When verbal individuals talk, they don’t have to concentrate on how to make the sounds that make up words; they concentrate on the idea of what they want to convey. The same principle holds true with an augmentative communication device as it replaces our articulators. If the motor movement required to say a word changes from one activity to another or over the course of an individual’s life as his or her need for vocabulary grows, the ability to access vocabulary will not become automatic.

In order to learn, an individual must be in an arousal state compatible for attending and learning. For individuals with developmental disabilities, particularly those with autism spectrum disorders, achieving and maintaining this state of “readiness to learn” can be challenging. Sensory techniques to help that individual maintain an optimal level of arousal need to be incorporated into treatment sessions. Not only do sensory motor activities help to modulate an individual’s level of arousal, but they tend to be inherently motivating and enjoyable. To keep the individual’s interest, follow their lead in determining the vocabulary to be introduced to match their desire to communicate. Natural, intrinsically motivating activities tend to encourage interactive communication and engagement while maintaining the individual’s interest more so than activities that require a particular response or compliance.

Particular motor movements are performed, learned and repeated based on the feedback received. When an individual communicates on an AAC device, he or she should experience the natural consequences of that action. Consistently, he or she hears the voice output produced by that device--the word or words that matched the motor movement. When there is a communicative partner, the partner should provide an animated reaction to the utterance, provide the requested activity/or item, or somehow in some way provide some appropriate response to enhance the meaning of the uttered word.

In order for a person to be able to generate whatever he or she wants to say, the AAC system needs to be word based rather than phrase based. Words can be combined in unlimited ways for expression; phrases cannot.  In spoken language, words have multiple meanings. You can “turn it on,” “turn it off,” “turn around,” “make a U-turn,” and say, “my turn.”  Therefore, the icons on the AAC device need to allow for these multiple meanings. If we had a different icon for each use of the word “turn,” it would soon be un-navigable.   

The auditory output from an augmentative communication device may help the individual with auditory processing delays. Pinker (1994) stated that, in speech, words run together without the space breaks afforded by written language. We are able to identify words in speech by matching stretches of sound with a mental reference. Prizant (1983) stated that individuals with autism have trouble segmenting incoming speech into meaningful word units. A word-based system with auditory output may have a positive influence on auditory processing skills, allowing the device user to pair individual words with their sound. LaSorte (1993) reported that synthetic speech facilitated natural speech production by segmenting speech into word units. Also, the auditory output from a device with synthetic speech is consistent across time whereas the auditory output from natural speakers can differ with changes in volume, intonation, pitch, etc.

As a result of intervention using the LAMP approach, it is hoped that the individual will gain the ability to independently and spontaneously communicate whatever they want to say. Learning a language takes many years for the neurologically typical individual. LAMP is a method for providing an individual with a language system that can progress from first words to fluent communication. Many individuals using the LAMP approach have demonstrated success, with some becoming very communicative.