Sample of use in education with students with IDD
PECS is taught in six progressive phases:
Phase 1 - Physical exchange:
In this phase, the user learns to deliver an image of a desired object to a person in order to obtain it. This process teaches the idea that images can be used to communicate desires.
Example: The student wants a toy. The teacher has the toy and the pupil must hand over a card with the picture of the toy to receive it.
Phase 2 - Increasing spontaneity:
The user learns to move around the environment to get images and bring them to a person, which encourages initiative in communication.
Example: The student has to go to a blackboard with pictures of different objects and bring the corresponding card to the teacher to make a request.
Phase 3 - Image discrimination:
The user learns to discriminate between different images to ask for what he/she wants, selecting the correct image among several options.
Example: The teacher presents several images on a blackboard (water, food, ball), and the student must select the image of the object he/she really wants.
Phase 4 - Sentence construction:
The user starts to form simple sentences using a sentence strip, usually starting with ‘I want’ followed by the image of the desired object.
Example: The learner selects a card that says ‘I want’ and places it next to the picture of a toy on the sentence strip to build a complete sentence.
Phase 5 - Answering questions:
The user learns to answer questions such as ‘What do you want?’ using pictures to form answers.
Example: The teacher asks ‘What do you want?’ and the student uses the cards to construct the answer, ‘I want water.’
Phase 6 - More complex comments and sentences:
In the last phase, the user learns to use PECS to make comments and express things like ‘I see’ or ‘I like’ instead of just making requests.
Example: The learner sees a flower and uses the sentence strip to say ‘I see flower’ using the corresponding cards.
