THE TREATMENT OF VOCAL STEREOTYPY IN CHILDREN WITH AUTISM SPECTRUM DISORDER

Abstract

People with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) exhibit different impairments in the domain of auditory processing of pitch, altitude and prosody of sounds and voices from the environment. It is believed that altered sensory processing of these individuals originates from insufficient stimulation from the persons’ surroundings, therefore they have the need to stimulate themselves in a way of emitting vocal stereotypes of different forms. Having that in mind, the aim of this literature review is to present interventions used in reducing vocal stereotypy in children with ASD, as well as to examine their efficiency. For literature search engines Google Scholar, SCIndex, ProQuest and Serbian Library Consortium for Coordinated Acquisition – KoBson were used. Original research articles were searched in Serbian and English language. Literature review focused on interventions whose primary aim was reducing vocal stereotypy with the self-stimulatory function in participants diagnosed with ASD. A total number of participants in all articles was nine, whose mean age was 7.1 years old. Different procedures were implemented and in 34.8 sessions on average these procedures and their combination led to an 86.5% of success in reducing vocal stereotypy on average. Having the success of mentioned interventions in mind, it is necessary to educate special educators from our region on how to implement them and introduce these procedures in curriculum of all the Faculties which educate future special educators who will work with children diagnosed with ASD. Key words: Vocal stereotypy, auto stimulation, self-stimulation, autism, treatment.