Family issues must be considered prior to the prescription of augmentative and alternative communication (AAC) for children with disabilities. A review of the literature is provided regarding three emerging trends related to AAC impact, including the prescription of appropriate AAC devices, implementation of AAC across multiple contexts, and maintenance of AAC use and anticipation of transition needs. The review suggests that failure to consider family issues may contribute to increased family stress and failure of children and families to use these devices. Future directions in AAC service delivery are summarized.
The effects of a pragmatic teaching strategy on 4 nonspeaking children's abilities to initiate requests for information (i.e., who, what, and where) using manual communication boards were investigated. A teaching strategy based on milieu teaching and time-delay procedures was developed and embedded in naturally structured communication tasks to evoke information requests. Results indicated that information requests using the communication board occurred only after the pragmatic teaching strategy was applied sequentially to the three request types during the experimental condition. This effect was demonstrated repeatedly across the 4 subjects. Although generalization across request types was not demonstrated, substantial generalization was found across partners and environments. A social validation measure confirmed the treatment effectiveness. Independent raters perceived significant differences when viewing before- and after-training videotapes on 7 of 10 communication variables for all subjects.
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