Effects of Imitation Therapy for Non-Verbal Children with Autism in Zambia

As infants develop, the skill of imitation typically emerges. This skill serves an important cognitive and social function in a child’s development (Ingersoll, 2011) and is essential for the development of language. Unfortunately, many children with autism (CA) have demonstrated deficits in imitation skills, and they show a general failure to understand relationships and communicate (Heinmann et al., 2006). Some initial studies have suggested that teaching the skill of imitation to CA leads to improvements in their social functioning, language, joint attention, and spontaneous gesture use (Ingersoll, 2008; Ingersoll & Schreibman, 2006). A specific imitation therapy intervention developed by Zedler (1972) resulted in increased verbalizations for non-verbal children who did not imitate (Gill et al., 2011). Unfortunately, there is no data to demonstrate that this technique has been used with children in Zambia, and, in fact, there is very little data or research on treatment of non-verbal CA in Zambia (Kabali et al, 2019; Nyoni & Serpell, 2012). This study attempted to ascertain preliminary data on the treatment of CA in Zambia. It involved utilization of imitation therapy with three young children with suspected autism who were non-verbal. Effectiveness of the intervention was measured by counting the changes in the number of different phonemes, the total utterances, the number of non-verbal imitations, and the number of reciprocal verbal imitations produced by the children. For these three children, the intervention resulted in significant changes in all areas. This preliminary study suggests that imitation therapy may be an effective intervention for non-verbal CA in Zambia.