Vestibular sensory stimulation (VSS; Ayers and Maillox, 1981) has been found to be effective in treating children for language development. Current literature lacks sufficient information on the effects of VSS on expressive language and attention in children diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). The purpose of this investigation was to examine the effect of VSS on expressive language and attention to task in children with ASD. Three participants ranging between 9.0 to 14.0 years-old diagnosed with ASD were recruited for this investigation. The participants received 20-minute sessions for 4 days across 3 weeks with each participant receiving a minimum of five sessions including at least two intervention sessions. A multiple baseline across participants design was used for this investigation. After the baseline phase, each participant received five minutes of VSS at the beginning of each session. Participant A and Participant C met criteria of five spontaneous requests over their baseline mean of spontaneous requests after two sessions, and participant B met criteria after four sessions. All three participants’ data points fell outside the upper two standard deviation band analysis indicating a significant intervention effect on expressive language. Only participant B’s data presented with a significant difference on the data for attention to task. The results of this investigation appears to indicate VSS to be effective on expressive language for children with ASD. Further research is recommended in order to continue to find supporting evidence on the relationship between vestibular sensory stimulation and expressive language.
