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

    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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