AAC augmentative alternative communication

BACKGROUND: People who have communication difficulties may benefit from using augmentative and alternative communication (AAC). Understanding and measuring outcomes from the use of AAC is an important part of evaluating the impact of devices and services. Outcome measurement needs to reflect the changing nature of the impact of using AAC on an individual's ability to participate in activities of daily life. There is a limited understanding of the concepts that should inform the evaluation of outcomes from AAC device provision, nor how people's expectations from AAC may change over time...

PURPOSE: Children who utilise augmentative and alternative communication (AAC) have difficulty participating in interactions with peers and speech-language pathologists (SLPs) lack training in the development of activities to specifically target participation. The purpose of the current study was to explore a pilot online training program designed to provide information about the development of collaborative learning (CL) activities to support participation. METHOD: A single-subject, multiple baseline across six participants in an initial group and a replication group was completed to assess the number of CL elements included in probe responses during baseline, intervention, and maintenance phases...

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This simulation study assessed the ability of Speech-Output Technologies (SOTs) to keep in-time during conversational repair. Fifty-eight Other Initiated Repair (OIR) initiators were collected from transcripts of repair interaction sequences collected from past research. A range of selection latencies were then used to calculate simulated utterance composition delays for the OIR initiators using two popular SOT software apps, with and without the use of word prediction. To determine whether OIR utterances could be produced within a socially sensitive temporal gap, composition delay was compared to a conservative temporal limit obtained for oral communicators (Kendrick, 2015)...

PURPOSE: This study evaluates three different language sample elicitation strategies to determine a valid elicitation strategy for early language learners who speak using augmentative and alternative communication (AAC). METHOD: Ten children who speak using AAC participated in this study. Language samples were elicited from each participant using three strategies: the Communication and Symbolic Behavior Scales (CSBS), a generic play-based elicitation strategy, and automatic data logging...

Numerous disabling motor and non-motor symptoms occur during Parkinson's disease (PD), including speech disorders, often referred to as hypokinetic dysarthria. PD is the most common cause of this type of dysarthria. About 90% of PD patients experience hypokinetic dysarthria, which is exacerbated as the disease progresses and makes it very difficult for other people to understand the person with PD. This disorder is characterized by a monotonous speech pattern, reduced and monotonous loudness, decreased stress, a breathy or hoarse voice quality, an increase in speech rate, rapid repetition of phonemes, and impreciseness in consonant production...

PURPOSE: When emergencies or disasters arise, individuals who use augmentative and alternative communication (AAC) are particularly vulnerable. It is critical that individuals who use AAC are supported to make decisions that impact their own lives and are able to communicate during such a crisis. Preparedness efforts that include a plan around communication needs and supports are necessary for ensuring that individuals who use AAC are able to understand options that ensure personal safety and express their needs during a time of crisis...

Literacy skills can assist in the navigation and enjoyment of adult life. For individuals who have reached adulthood without strong literacy skills, opportunities for continued literacy learning are few. Redesigning AAC technologies to support literacy skill development could extend literacy learning opportunities for adults with developmental disabilities who have limited speech. The current preliminary study evaluated an AAC technology feature designed to support literacy development. The study used a multiple probe across participants design...

There is limited research targeting communication interventions for children with severe/profound intellectual and multiple disabilities. This study addressed outcomes from a communication course for parents of children with severe/profound intellectual and multiple disabilities and follows up on a previous publication by Rensfeldt Flink et al. (2020). Potential observable changes in the children's and parents' communicative behavior were studied as well as the parents' experiences of the intervention process and the effect of the course on parent-child communication...

PURPOSE: Practicing speech-language pathologists (SLPs) reveal a perceived lack of preparedness to deliver augmentative and alternative communication (AAC) services. This is concerning because it is indicative of inadequate graduate training in AAC. The purpose of this clinical focus article was to present a collaborative model of clinical education for AAC preservice training. This clinical focus article will provide recommendations to support practicing SLPs in the provision of effective clinical instruction for preservice clinicians working with individuals with complex communication needs who require AAC...

Children who lack functional spoken language are candidates for augmentative and alternative communication (AAC). Aided AAC and naturalistic interventions offer the potential to extend the communication functions demonstrated by children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) who are nonspeaking. Related intervention research, however, has been limited, in that interventions have generally targeted a limited range of communication functions taught in highly structured, decontextualized environments. The aim of this study was to investigate the efficacy of an intervention that combined aided AAC with a naturalistic intervention - enhanced milieu teaching (AEMT) - to increase symbolic communication in children with autism spectrum disorder...

PURPOSE: Understanding students' home literacy environments can help speech-language pathologists, teachers, and other educators partner with families to promote language and literacy learning. This study focused on gaining insight into the views of parents of elementary-age students with intellectual and developmental disabilities who had complex communication needs related to supporting children's language and literacy learning in the home. METHOD: This qualitative study was conducted during the COVID-19 pandemic, when many schools were utilizing remote or hybrid learning arrangements...

Children with complex communication needs often have multiple disabilities including visual impairments that impact their ability to interact with aided augmentative and alternative communication (AAC) systems. Just as the field benefited from a consideration of visual cognitive neuroscience in construction of visual displays, an exploration of psychoacoustics can potentially assist in maximizing the possibilities within AAC systems when the visual channel is either (a) not the primary sensory mode, or (b) is one that can be augmented to ultimately benefit AAC outcomes...

PURPOSE: The COVID-19 pandemic caused significant changes for family-professional interactions. Many services shifted to telepractice, with new opportunities for parents and speech-language pathologists (SLPs) to partner for service delivery. Parent-coached models of augmentative and alternative communication (AAC) intervention provide positive outcomes for children; however, SLPs have reported difficulty building strong partnerships with families. The shift to telepractice during the COVID-19 pandemic provided a unique context to examine factors influencing parent-SLP partnerships, particularly for parents with children who use aided AAC...

Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) commonly results in the inability to produce natural speech, making speech-generating devices (SGDs) important. Historically, synthetic voices generated by SGDs were neither unique, nor age- or dialect-appropriate, which depersonalized SGD use. Voices generated by SGDs can now be customized via voice banking and should ideally sound uniquely like the individual's natural speech, be intelligible, and elicit positive reactions from communication partners. This large-scale 2 x 2 mixed between- and within-participants design examined perceptions of 831 adult listeners regarding custom synthetic voices created for two individuals diagnosed with ALS via two synthesis systems in common clinical use (waveform concatenation and statistical parametric synthesis)...

INTRODUCTION: Augmentative and alternative communication (AAC) intervention research is rarely focused on school-age beginning communicators despite the urgent need to ensure individuals in this population have access to the fundamental human right of communication. METHOD: Four school-age children with multiple disabilities who were primarily prelinguistic communicators participated in the current study. The study used a single subject research design to explore the effects of two interaction approaches - a social routine approach and a directive approach - on prelinguistic communication, compared to independent play and to one another...

Facilitated communication (FC) has been a heavily debated and documented topic across multiple disciplines, including sociology, education, psychology, pediatrics, speech-language pathology, and disability studies. Although many professionals from various disciplines and advocates have offered opinions, suggestions, and research on the topic, there has been minimal input from the occupational therapy (OT) profession. The lack of OT input is noteworthy as OTs are experts in enabling upper extremity performance and independence through a variety of training, adaptation and modification strategies, and use of external supports...

Parent training programs aimed at improving language outcomes for children with complex communication needs have predominantly been evaluated on child-centered outcomes and less often on the impact on social life or parental well-being. This study examined parent perceptions of social life before and after ComAlong, a group intervention providing parents with knowledge and training in responsive communication, environmental-milieu teaching strategies and augmentative and alternative communication (AAC). Parents ( N  = 467) completed questionnaires during the first and last sessions of ComAlong groups held in Sweden 2012 to 2018...

Automatic speech recognition (ASR) is an emerging technology that has been used in recognizing non-typical speech of people with speech impairment and enhancing the language sample transcription process in communication sciences and disorders. However, the feasibility of using ASR for recognizing speech samples from high-tech Augmentative and Alternative Communication (AAC) systems has not been investigated. This proof-of-concept paper aims to investigate the feasibility of using AAC-ASR to transcribe language samples generated by high-tech AAC systems and compares the recognition accuracy of two published ASR models: CMU Sphinx and Google Speech-to-text...

PURPOSE: This article reports a pilot study that combined clinical training and academic instruction in a graduate-level augmentative and alternative communication (AAC) course. The authors aim to (a) provide a detailed description of the AAC course and (b) present preliminary data regarding the graduate students' perception on the AAC course and their own competencies in AAC. METHOD: Forty-three graduate students completed an intensive focused course that included AAC fieldwork (i...