The effect of aided AAC modeling on the expression of multi-symbol messages by preschoolers who use AAC

Augmentative and Alternative Communication

Kent-Walsh

Berens

et al. 2008

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115

Many children who require augmentative and alternative communication (AAC) have difficulties shifting from the single-to multi-symbol stage of language development. Ensuring that children who use AAC receive evidence-based interventions to address this problem is critical. Furthermore, there has been little AAC treatment efficacy research to date that addresses the needs of multicultural populations, particularly those of Latino children who use AAC and their families. To address these issues, the current investigation used a mixed methodology, which included a focus group to determine if any changes needed to be made to an existing instructional program; and a single subject, multiple probe, across participants design to evaluate the effects of a caregiver instructional program on the multi-symbol utterance productions of Latino children who used AAC. Specifically, a cognitive strategy instructional approach that has been used to teach turn-taking skills to both Caucasian and African American children who use AAC was modified and used to teach caregivers how to support the production of their children's multi-symbol messages. In order to foster emergent literacy skills, caregivers implemented the strategy during book reading activities. Focus group results revealed that changes to the instructional program may be required for some Latino families. With regard to the instructional program, all caregivers successfully learned to use the instructional strategy, and all children increased their use of multi-symbol messages. Research and clinical implications of the findings are discussed.

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Teaching Latino Parents to Support the Multi-Symbol Message Productions of their Children who Require AAC

Augmentative and Alternative Communication

Kent-Walsh

Berens

et al. 2008

Self Cite

115

“…Although a growing body of work supports building early syntax skills with this population (Binger et al, 2008;Binger, Kent-Walsh, Ewing, & Taylor, 2010;Binger & Light, 2007;Kent-Walsh et al, 2015), the current investigation moves this work forward in two primary ways: First, using DA may enable clinicians to improve their ability to predict when children are ready to focus on early syntax when using AAC. Second, focusing on a range of targets may help determine which particular linguistic structures may be viable at a given point in time.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Many skills that children using AAC need to learn are identical to the skills of children who rely exclusively on speech to communicate, including the types of semantic, morphosyntactic, and narrative goals included in the DA studies discussed above. Although these types of language skills have been targeted successfully in intervention (e.g., Binger, Kent-Walsh, Berens, Del Campo, & Rivera, 2008;Binger & Light, 2007;Romski et al, 2010;Soto, Solomon-Rice, & Caputo, 2009), they have not-with two known exceptions discussed below-been examined using DA techniques.…”

Section: Da For Children Who Require Aacmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Although some studies have indicated that this is a challenging task even for typically developing preschoolers (Sutton, Trudeau, Morford, Rios, & Poirier, 2010), emerging evidence indicates that with appropriate intervention, creating multisymbol messages is an achievable goal for young children using aided AAC (Binger et al, 2008;Binger & Light, 2007;Kent-Walsh, Binger, & Buchanan, 2015).…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

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Dynamic Assessment for 3- and 4-Year-Old Children Who Use Augmentative and Alternative Communication: Evaluating Expressive Syntax

Kent-Walsh

King

2017

J Speech Lang Hear Res

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Purpose: The developmental readiness to produce early sentences with an iPad communication application was assessed with ten 3-and 4-year-old children with severe speech disorders using graduated prompting dynamic assessment (DA) techniques. The participants' changes in performance within the DA sessions were evaluated, and DA performance was compared with performance during a subsequent intervention. Method: Descriptive statistics were used to examine patterns of performance at various cueing levels and mean levels of cueing support. The Wilcoxon signed-ranks test was used to measure changes within the DA sessions. Correlational data were calculated to determine how well performance in DA predicted performance during a subsequent intervention.Results: Participants produced targets successfully in DA at various cueing levels, with some targets requiring less cueing than others. Performance improved significantly within the DA sessions-that is, the level of cueing required for accurate productions of the targets decreased during DA sessions. Last, moderate correlations existed between DA scores and performance during the intervention for 3 out of 4 targets, with statistically significant findings for 2 of 4 targets. Conclusion: DA offers promise for examining the developmental readiness of young children who use augmentative and alternative communication to produce early expressive language structures.

“…As examples, Gordon-Brannan and Hodson (2000) used continuous speech samples; Hustad, Allison, McFadd, and Riehle (2014) used language samples; and Monsen (1981) used a single word intelligibility task, with all considering intelligibility measures below 50%-60% to indicate severely impaired speech. In a similar manner, a commonly used criterion to include children with highly unintelligible speech who require augmentative and alternative communication (AAC) in research studies is having speech less than 50% comprehensible on a single word comprehensibility task (Binger, Kent-Walsh, Berens, Del Campo, & Rivera, 2008;Binger & Light, 2007;King, Binger, & Kent-Walsh, 2015). Thus, despite differences in tasks, an overall pattern for children considered to have severe speech impairments is apparent with a maximal intelligibility (or comprehensibility, depending on the study) of approximately 50%-60%.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Language Sampling for Preschoolers With Severe Speech Impairments

Am J Speech Lang Pathol

Ragsdale

Bustos

2016

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Purpose: The purposes of this investigation were to determine if measures such as mean length of utterance (MLU) and percentage of comprehensible words can be derived reliably from language samples of children with severe speech impairments and if such measures correlate with tools that measure constructs assumed to be related. Method: Language samples of 15 preschoolers with severe speech impairments (but receptive language within normal limits) were transcribed independently by 2 transcribers. Nonparametric statistics were used to determine which measures, if any, could be transcribed reliably and to determine if correlations existed between language sample measures and standardized measures of speech, language, and cognition.Results: Reliable measures were extracted from the majority of the language samples, including MLU in words, mean number of syllables per utterance, and percentage of comprehensible words. Language sample comprehensibility measures were correlated with a single word comprehensibility task. Also, language sample MLUs and mean length of the participants' 3 longest sentences from the MacArthur-Bates Communicative Development Inventory (Fenson et al., 2006) were correlated. Conclusion: Language sampling, given certain modifications, may be used for some 3-to 5-year-old children with normal receptive language who have severe speech impairments to provide reliable expressive language and comprehensibility information.