Systematic Physical Assistance During Intervention for People Who Use High-Tech Augmentative and Alternative Communication Systems: The Importance of Using a Common Vocabulary.

PURPOSE: Speech-language pathologists (SLPs) use prompting hierarchies to facilitate learning and monitor treatment progress. When working with people who use augmentative and alternative communication (AAC), SLPs typically use physical assistance to prompt motor learning. However, there is currently no standardization regarding the number of physical prompting levels or an operational definition for each prompting level. Clinicians and researchers may be working from different definitions; making treatment progress monitoring and intervention effectiveness comparisons across research studies is problematic. METHOD: The purpose of this article is to illustrate the advantage of using the language in the Functional Independence MeasureSM (FIM; Deutsch et al., 1996) to describe the level of physical assistance provided during AAC intervention and AAC intervention research for individuals who use high-tech AAC systems. RESULTS: Standardizing the level of physical assistance will provide important information regarding AAC learning that researchers may use as they continue to study the active ingredients of AAC intervention. Furthermore, standardizing the descriptions of physical assistance levels will enable clinicians to accurately describe a learner's performance. CONCLUSION: This article describes how the language used in the FIM may be used by SLPs to provide a consistent, continuous, and systematic approach to fading the physical assistance used during AAC intervention to ultimately support independent use of high-tech AAC systems.

Within arm's reach: The role of proximity in speech generating device use of ambulatory children with autism.

Purpose: Augmentative and Alternative Communication (AAC) provides an alternative means of communication for individuals who are unable to effectively communicate using spoken language. The present study seeks to investigate the role of proximity in facilitating AAC (specifically Speech Generating Devices; SGD) use in a homogeneous population: ambulatory school-aged children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD).Method: Twelve school-age children with ASD who use an SGD as their primary mode of communication participated in the study. The percentage of time the child was within the proximity of their device was calculated over nine videotaped sessions and data logging provided information regarding device use over an 18-week period.Result: Children were in proximity to their device 65% of the time. There was a significant positive correlation between percentage of time in proximity to device and the average minutes of device use on the day video recorded. Exploratory analyses revealed that communicative abilities may be more connected to proximity than school context.Conclusion: These results support the importance of developing a program for assuring device proximity in order to encourage consistent device use in minimally verbal ambulatory school-age children with ASD.

Framework for Selecting Vocabulary for Preliterate Children Who Use Augmentative and Alternative Communication.

Purpose Nearly 50% of school-based speech-language pathologists (SLPs) provide services to school-age children who use augmentative and alternative communication (AAC). However, many SLPs report having insufficient knowledge in the area of AAC implementation. The objective of this tutorial is to provide clinicians with a framework for supporting 1 area of AAC implementation: vocabulary selection for preliterate children who use AAC. Method This tutorial focuses on 4 variables that clinicians should consider when selecting vocabulary: (a) contexts/environments where the vocabulary can be used, (b) time span during which the vocabulary will be relevant, (c) whether the vocabulary can elicit and maintain interactions with other people, and (d) whether the vocabulary will facilitate developmentally appropriate grammatical structures. This tutorial focuses on the role that these variables play in language development in verbal children with typical development, verbal children with language impairment, and nonverbal children who use AAC. Results Use of the 4 variables highlighted above may help practicing SLPs select vocabulary that will best facilitate language acquisition in preliterate children who use AAC.