Maternal Responsiveness to AAC

Abstract

How a mother responds to her young child's early communication behavior has been found to contribute to the children's scores on cognitive and language measures. This effect has been found in both children with and without developmental disabilities. Aided augmentative and alternative communication (AAC) is a communication strategy used with young children with developmental disabilities. Currently, there have been no studies addressing how a mother's play with her children may change when an aided AAC device is added. In this study 25 dyads participated in familiar and unfamiliar to play with and without a BIGmack present. Mothers' responsive and directive behaviors were coded and compared across both types of play. When the two conditions were compared, mothers showed more overall responsiveness to their children's communication when the BIGmack was present. Mothers did not increase their directive behaviors significantly between the two conditions.