What is Floor Time

This chapter reviews the major in-person therapies for autism. It begins with standard therapies like general speech-language therapy, applied behavioral analysis (ABA/DTT), and more naturalistic alternatives (DSP/DIR/Floor Time). It discusses how these therapies approach language and what the data show about their efficacy. It then turns to additional/supplemental strategies, including those that seek to boost attention to speech and others that use visual strategies like the picture exchange communication system (PECS). The chapter then describes other systematic approaches to instruction—direct instruction and precision teaching—discussing how these potentially contribute to language instruction. It concludes with a discussion of the shortcomings of the in-person methods, including limitations in eliciting appropriate practice, challenges providing appropriate feedback, deficiencies in curriculum coverage (particularly grammar and pragmatics), and difficulty providing effective instruction to non-speaking, nonverbal individuals.