Erin Sheldon, M. Edsheldon.erin@gmail.com

Innovative devices, tools, and communication methods that could change your life!

Aided language input

Why do we communicate?

Why do we communicate?• Share information• Social interaction• Effect change, influence others• Share opinions and preferences• Share our stories and experiences

Communication is when one person shares something the other person did not already

know they were thinking.

How did we learn to speak and communicate?

Did we demonstrate we

had the prerequisite skills

before anyone spoke to us?

Receptive Communication/

Listening

Reading

Expressive Communication/

AAC

Writing

Oral and Written Language Development (Koppenhaver, Coleman, Kalman & Yoder, 1991, adapted from Teale & Sulzby, 1989)

If you speak a second language, how did you learn?

If you grew up without speech, what did your communication

look like?

Requests

Testing

Using your body

Kate Ahern

For persons who have never had speech or

literacy:

Have they ever had a model of language they

could access?

Spoken language is inaccessible to students who cannot speak

The oral language received by children who cannot generate speech does not serve as a

useful model on which the children can observe, experiment, imitate, and respond.

Goossens’, Crain, & Elder, 1992

Spoken language is inaccessible to children who cannot speak

Children who cannot produce speech experience minimal exposure to the use of visual symbols to

communicate.Unlike children who can speak, children with

complex communication needs are rarely immersed in modes of communication they can

observe, comprehend, imitate, and finally express.

Drager et al., 2006; Goossens’ & Kraat, 1985

How do we develop communication skills in our

students?

Input Output

Spoken Language Spoken Language

Spoken Language Aided Language

Spoken Language Development

Aided Language Development?

Burkhart & Porter, 2006

Aided Language Spoken Language (Sign Language)

Aided Language (Spoken Language)

(Sign Language)

Aided Language Development using Aided Language Stimulation

Input Output

Burkhart & Porter, 2006

What is AAC?

An alternative or an augmentation (addition) to the oral/auditory symbol system of spoken

language:

Manual sign language

Visual alternative language

Beukelman & Mirenda, 2012

Expressive Communication/

AAC

Vocabulary

Hardware

Symbols

not

Kate Ahern, PrAACtical AAC

With any alternative communication system:

What peoplecan express is the floor,

not the ceiling, of their comprehension.

Why AAC?

In the absence of a formal signed language (such as ASL or Makaton),

unaided communication methods such as idiosyncratic manual signs are

inadequate to express abstract thoughts, such as messages about the past or future.

Beukelman & Mirenda, 2012

Why do we model AAC?

By observing visual symbols as they are used by communication partners during motivating

activities, children learn how visual symbols can be combined and recombined to generate

communicative messages.

Beukelman & Mirenda, 2012

Aided language input

The adults and peers model the use of augmentative communication strategies that are

accessible to our student who cannot speak.

We teach our student that there are two ways to express the same message.

We model a second, accessible way to augment our spoken language.

Aided language input

Communication partners provide aided language input by highlighting symbols on the child’s communication display as they interact

with the child verbally; highlighting the symbol supports the child to

map the verbal utterance to a concrete symbolic referent.

Elder & Goossens’, 1994

General rule: model symbol use one level above your student

Student is not using symbols: model one- or two key words

Student is using a single symbol at a time: model two- or three-symbol messages

Student is using 2-symbols together:model 3-5 symbol messages

Go Like

You go I like

You want to go You want that

You don’t like that!

What matters most is the quality of the interaction:

having “conversational duets” with people you care about about things/

activities you care about.

Golinkoff & Hirsh-Pasek, 2015

Aided language input results in long-term skill development

• Significant gains in basic expressive communication and

receptive understanding• Significantly increases knowledge of, and use of, visual symbols• Most children learn to generate multi-word messages• Increases participation in classroom activities• Equally effective across the lifespan: children, teens, and adults• Gains persist long-term and significantly surpass the expressive

and receptive communication skills of ability-matched controls.

Dada & Alant, 2009; Harris & Reichle, 2004; Romski & Sevcik, 1996; Romski, Sevcik, Adamson, & Bakeman, 2005; Romski et al, 2010

Every individual is ready for aided language input

Individuals with strong expressive skills observe a model of more sophisticated communication skills, such as

conversation and story telling.

Individuals with strong receptive understanding discover a ramp to access the spoken language of the people around

them.

Individuals who struggle to comprehend spoken language discover a visual support to anchor their comprehension; we

speak slower and use a more strategically planned vocabulary when we model AAC.

Research and Practice for Persons with Severe Disabilities

1 –15© The Author(s) 2016

Reprints and permissions:sagepub.com/journalsPermissions.nav

DOI: 10.1177/1540796916638822rps.sagepub.com

Article

AAC Modeling Intervention Research Review

Samuel C. Sennott1, Janice C. Light2, and David McNaughton2

AbstractA systematic review of research on the effects of interventions that include communication partner modeling of aided augmentative and alternative communication (AAC) on the language acquisition of individuals with complex communication needs was conducted. Included studies incorporated AAC modeling as a primary component of the intervention, defined as the communication partners (a) modeling aided AAC as they speak and (b) participating in the context of a naturalistic communication interaction. This review used a best-evidence approach, including nine single-case studies, with 31 participants, and 70 replications, and one quasi-experimental randomized group design study, including 63 participants. The results of the review indicated that AAC modeling intervention packages led to meaningful linguistic gains across four areas including (a) pragmatics, marked by increases in communication turns; (b) semantics, marked by receptive and expressive vocabulary increases; (c) syntax, marked by multi-symbol turn increases; and (d) morphology, marked by increases in target morphology structures.

Keywordsaugmentative and alternative communication, aided language stimulation, AAC modeling, communication, complex communication needs

The purpose of this article is to present a systematic review of research documenting the effects of language interventions for people with complex communication needs that include communication partners model-ing the use of augmentative and alternative communication (AAC). A review of AAC modeling interven-tions is important because of a strong theoretical foundation for the significance of language input in the language acquisition process, which is presented in general linguistic literature (Gallway & Richards, 1994; Gerken, 2008; Hart & Risley, 1995; Hirsh-Pasek & Golinkoff, 1996), sign language literature (Bavelier, Newport, & Supalla, 2003; Newport & Supalla, 2000), and AAC-related literature (Goossens’, Crain, & Elder, 1992; Light, 1997; Romski & Sevcik, 1996; M. Smith & Grove, 2003).

Language Development for Children Using SpeechFor many individuals, speech serves as their primary language tool, and the development of sophisticated speech and language skills occurs in a relatively fluid sequence throughout childhood and early adolescence (Adamson, 1995; Brown, 1973; Hart & Risley, 1995; Tomasello, 2003). This development of communication skills begins in the first years of life, and during this time, children experience rich models of speech (Gallway

1Portland State University, OR, USA2The Pennsylvania State University, University Park, USA

Corresponding Author:Samuel C. Sennott, Assistant Professor of Special Education, Universal Design Lab, Portland State University, Post Office Box 751, Portland, OR 97207, USA. Email: sennott@pdx.edu

638822 RPSXXX10.1177/1540796916638822Research and Practice for Persons with Severe DisabilitiesSennott et al.research-article2016

by guest on April 17, 2016rps.sagepub.comDownloaded from

Which AAC system is best?

The system that the most communication partners can understand and use that our child

can access, explore, imitate, babble, and eventually express.

It is time… to stop asking if a child is ready for a

communication system.

It is time… for families to ask what communication

system we can model.

It is time… for professionals to ask what support

families need to model AAC.

Additional resources

http://praacticalaac.org/

https://www.facebook.com/groups/ASFCommTrainingSeries/