What is PECS?

The Picture Exchange Communication System (PECS) is a unique supporting communication system that was developed in the USA in 1985. PECS teaches students functional communication skills through the use of pictures. It was first implemented with pre-school children diagnosed with autism. Due to its success in promoting children to communicate using pictures and symbols, it was then used worldwide for nonverbal students with varying exceptionalities. 

PECS consists of six phases starting simply by learning to give a picture of a desired object or action to another individual who will respond to the request. As the phases progress they become more complex until it reaches the final “commenting” phase where students respond to short questions with short sentences starting with “I see”, “I hear”, “I feel” and so on. Properly working through the phases of PECS a teacher should see an improvement with students' communication starting with requesting items or commenting on something, and ending with having small conversations.

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Points of Improvement

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Benefits and Uses of PECS

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