Title

Teaching Educational Assistants to Facilitate the Multisymbol Message Productions of Young Students Who Require Augmentative and Alternative Communication

Authors

Authors

C. Binger; J. Kent-Walsh; C. Ewing;S. Taylor

Comments

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Abbreviated Journal Title

Am. J. Speech-Lang. Pathol.

Keywords

augmentative and alternative communication (AAC); intervention; educational assistants; symbol combinations; GRAPHIC SYMBOL COMBINATIONS; AIDED AAC; PRESCHOOLERS; STRATEGIES; CHILDREN; MODEL; Audiology & Speech-Language Pathology; Linguistics; Rehabilitation

Abstract

Purpose: Many classroom educational assistants (EAs) have a significant amount of responsibility in carrying out educational plans for children who use augmentative and alternative communication (AAC), but they receive little instruction on how to do so (Kent-Walsh & Light, 2003). This study investigates the impact of using a communication partner instructional program to teach EAs how to teach their students to produce symbol combinations on their speech-generating devices. Method: A single-subject multiple-probe-acrossparticipants design was used to evaluate the effectiveness of the instructional program on (a) the EAs' implementation of an interaction strategy with their students who used AAC and (b) the rates of multisymbol message productions for the students who used AAC. Results: All 3 participating EAs learned to use the interaction strategy appropriately, and all 3 participating students who used AAC increased their multisymbol message production rates. Conclusions: Results provide further evidence (a) of the viability of using a communication partner instructional program for teaching partners how to facilitate the communication skills of children who use AAC and (b) that the interaction strategy can be an effective tool for increasing expressive multisymbol message rates for children who use AAC.

Journal Title

American Journal of Speech-Language Pathology

Volume

19

Issue/Number

2

Publication Date

1-1-2010

Document Type

Article

Language

English

First Page

108

Last Page

120

WOS Identifier

WOS:000279673700003

ISSN

1058-0360

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