The effects of aided AAC interventions on AAC use, speech, and symbolic gestures.

Augmentative and alternative communication (AAC) service provision can be time-consuming, and it is important to ensure that the time invested in aided AAC interventions is worth the costs. As children who use AAC are multimodal communicators, it is important to understand the effects that aided AAC interventions may have not only on AAC use but also on other communication modes, including speech and symbolic gestures. Toward these ends, this article contains a review of commonly used AAC intervention techniques, a discussion of how use of these techniques affects aided AAC use, and an examination of the effect that AAC interventions have on other communication modes, including speech and various types of gestures. Overall, current research findings indicate that aided AAC interventions can be highly effective for teaching students who use AAC to become more effective communicators and that such interventions do not have a negative effect on speech-and may, in some cases, have a positive effect on speech.

[1]  Janice Light,et al.  Communicative interaction between young nonspeaking physically disabled children and their primary caregivers: Part III—modes of communication , 1985 .

[2]  Cathy Binger,et al.  Story Reading interactions between preschoolers who use AAC and their mothers , 1994 .

[3]  D. Guess,et al.  Opportunities to Express Preferences and Make Choices among Students with Severe Disabilities in Classroom Settings , 1987 .

[4]  Jennifer Kent-Walsh,et al.  Effects of Parent Instruction on Communicative Turns of Latino Children Using Augmentative and Alternative Communication During Storybook Reading , 2008 .

[5]  Cathy Binger,et al.  Building communicative competence with individuals who use augmentative and alternative communication , 1998 .

[6]  A. Bondy,et al.  The Picture Exchange Communication System , 1994, Seminars in speech and language.

[7]  Cathy Binger,et al.  The effect of aided AAC modeling on the expression of multi-symbol messages by preschoolers who use AAC , 2007, Augmentative and alternative communication.

[8]  Erna Alant,et al.  The social interaction of an adolescent who uses AAC: The evaluation of a peer-training program , 2005 .

[9]  R. Nieuwenhuis Breaking the speech barrier. , 1989, Nursing Times.

[10]  R. Sevcik,et al.  Breaking the speech barrier : language development through augmented means , 1996 .

[11]  Ralf W Schlosser,et al.  Concomitant use of the matrix strategy and the mand-model procedure in teaching graphic symbol combinations , 2006, Augmentative and alternative communication.

[12]  Cathy Binger,et al.  Teaching Latino Parents to Support the Multi-Symbol Message Productions of their Children who Require AAC , 2008, Augmentative and alternative communication.

[13]  Ralf W Schlosser,et al.  The impact of augmentative and alternative communication intervention on the speech production of individuals with developmental disabilities: a research review. , 2006, Journal of speech, language, and hearing research : JSLHR.

[14]  W. Stone,et al.  A randomized comparison of the effect of two prelinguistic communication interventions on the acquisition of spoken communication in preschoolers with ASD. , 2006, Journal of speech, language, and hearing research : JSLHR.

[15]  Jeff Sigafoos,et al.  Effects of Speech Output on Maintenance of Requesting and Frequency of Vocalizations in Three Children with Developmental Disabilities , 2003, Augmentative and alternative communication.

[16]  Janice C Light,et al.  General Education Teachers' Experiences with Inclusion of Students who use Augmentative and Alternative Communication , 2003 .