**Speech-Language Pathology in the Assessment and Diagnosis within the Autism Spectrum**

Fernanda Dreux Miranda Fernandes, Milene Rossi Pereira Barbosa, Thaís Helena Ferreira Santos and Cibelle Albuquerque de La Higuera Amato

Additional information is available at the end of the chapter

http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/59409

**1. Introduction**

The main purpose of this chapter is to discuss assessment tools that can be used with children and adolescents of the autism spectrum and verify their effectiveness. It will be based on two studies that present the application and comparison of 4 different diagnostic tools. These four instruments are not language-specific and therefore can be used with different groups of children that speak different languages. Certainly cultural variations must be considered but the possibility of using tools that are internationally recognized may contribute to the efforts in improving the amount of information about diagnosis and treatment as proposed by the World Health Organization (WHO) in the World Report on Disabilities (2012).

The first study associates two different methods for identifying the functional communicative profile of children with autism, specifically regarding the initiative and interactivity of communication of individuals with autism.

The FCP-R is a protocol designed to the individual communication assessment developed by Kleiman (1994). It provides a simple and organized evaluation procedure based on age and acquired and/or developmental deficits. It can be used in four different ways: based on an interview with the therapists or the parents; direct assessment of the child/adolescent of observation of filmed samples.

This tool assesses the individual communication abilities in the following areas: Sensory/ Motor; Attentiveness; Behavior; Receptive Language; Expressive Language; Pragmatic/Social;

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Speech; Voice; Oral; Fluency and Non-Oral Communication. To this study the areas of Behavior; Attentiveness; Receptive Language; Expressive Language and Pragmatic/Social were selected.

The analysis of the functional communicative profile (FCP) adopts the criteria proposed by Fernandes (2004). It uses 15-minute filmed samples of patient-therapist interaction. In these situations the dyads play with toys regularly used in language-therapy sessions and that usually produced good communicative situations. Data are recorded, transcribed and analyzed with a specific protocol.

The analysis of the FCP uses the Pragmatic Recording Protocol [8]. This study used the data about the communicative functions. After the record of the data in the specific protocols the incidence of each communicative function expressed by the participant is determined as well as the proportion of the communicative space occupied, the number of communicative acts expressed per minute and the proportion of more interactive communicative acts expressed.

The occupation of the communicative space is determined by the ratio of communicative acts produced by the participant and by the therapist in each sample. The number of communica‐ tive acts expressed per minute was obtained by the ratio of communicative acts expressed and the size of the sample (in minutes). The proportion of interactive communicative acts is defined by the ratio of all communicative acts expressed by the participant and those that expressed one of the more interactive communicative functions.
