SPCE 292: Treatment and Interventions for Autism Spectrum Disorders

Your assignment:

"Select an augmentative and alternative communication device or system discussed in Chapter 5 of your text. Provide a short overview of how the device or system works and how it is used with an individual with autism spectrum disorder. Conduct a literature search and find two data-based articles discussing its use with individuals with autism spectrum disorder. Summarize each article and provide a statement of whether the research supports the use of the device or system with individuals with autism."

Both APA PsycInfo and ERIC include coverage of the topic of augmentative and alternative communication.  Either of these would be a good choice.  You may also want to consider searching in the nursing database called CINAHL if you want to focus on the health side of using an augmentative and alternative communication device.

Here are links to those databases: 

Using the CHOP, DROP, and OR method (mentioned on the main page to this guide), you can split your search up into the concepts involved.

If you're not sure of the terms to use as you start out, remember that doing a broad search and looking through what you retrieve can be helpful.

• Look at the terms used by authors in their article titles, and in their abstracts.
• Look at the terms used by the database by checking the subject area

When you find terms that look like they might help, incorporate them into your search.

Do remember that the more search boxes you put terms in, the fewer records you'll retrieve.  If you're finding too few results, remove a search box so that you have more records to look at.

The articles you use for this assignment must be based on data.

Signs an article you find is data-based:

• it says it uses participants
• it includes these headings within the article: introduction, literature review, methods, results, and discussion/conclusion.

• Go to APA PsycINFO and type in the terms you want to search on.
• Under the search boxes, you'll see Search Options with a Limit Your Results box.
• There's a Methodology limiter at the bottom, where you can choose either EMPIRICAL STUDY or QUANTITATIVE STUDY.  Both of those methodology types include data in them.

Unfortunately, few other databases allow you to place this kind of "methodology" limiter, so it's on you to look for the signs, mentioned above.  Often just reading the abstract will make it clear that the study design is based on data, though, so it's not too difficult.