Proposals for speech therapy for autist children: a systematic review of literature*

Abstract

The changes in language in autistic disorder are usually characterized by significant delays or total absence of development of this skill. These reports show the major changes in language in autism and thus confirm the importance of speech therapy in the treatment of patients with this diagnoses. It is clear the importance to meet the proposals of therapeutic interventions to be used. Objective: To review current articles on proposals of speech therapy for autistic children through literature. Method: Bibliographic search was performed using electronic data banks Medline, Lilacs and SciELO (2006 - 2010). The key words used in English were: “Autistic disorder” and “speech therapy” in the databases Medline and Lilacs and in Portuguese: “Autism” and “Speech” in the SciELO database. Results: There were 117 articles found with the key words, and selecting items for the years 2006 to 2010, we obtained 48 articles. Conclusion: There were 25 proposals of intervention, of these, six showed progressive steps of application / method development, seven were composed of a single step, nine are strategies related to the participants, materials and places and three were not detailed in their articles.