Long-term outcomes for individuals who use augmentative and alternative communication: Part III – contributing factors

Language acquisition theories differ in the importance they assign to production as a learning mechanism. This review summarizes some of the theoretical issues linked to this debate and considers their implications for children with severe speech and physical impairments. The unique aspects of the language-learning contexts of these children are explored. Drawing largely on papers published within the journal Augmentative and Alternative Communication, this review summarizes features of language development that have been described over the past 3 decades and considers how these findings might illuminate our understanding of language development across both spoken and aided modalities. Implications for assessment, intervention and for further research are suggested.

Section: Running Head: Language Development and Aided Communication 15mentioning

confidence: 99%

Language Development of Individuals Who Require Aided Communication: Reflections on State of the Science and Future Research Directions

Smith

2015

“…Hamm and Mirenda (2006) examined long-term outcomes for eight participants with developmental disabilities and found that those with greater communicative competence also reported higher quality of life outcomes. Lund and Light (2006;2007a, 2007b) also reported retrospectively on the long-term outcomes of AAC intervention -this time with a cohort of participants with severe physical and speech impairments who had received AAC intervention over a 15-year period. They documented outcomes across various levels of the ICF model, including body functions, activities, and participation (e.g., receptive language, reading comprehension, communicative interaction, educational and vocational achievement, self-determination, quality of life).…”

Section: Focus On Long-term Outcomesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Designing AAC Research and Intervention to Improve Outcomes for Individuals with Complex Communication Needs

Light

McNaughton

2015

Self Cite

162

There is a rapidly growing body of research that demonstrates the positive effects of augmentative and alternative communication (AAC) intervention on the communication of children and adults with complex communication needs. Despite the positive impact of many AAC interventions, however, many individuals with complex communication needs continue to experience serious challenges participating in educational, vocational, healthcare, and community environments. In this paper, we apply the framework proposed by the International Classifi cation of Functioning, Disability and Health (ICF) to illustrate the need to re-think AAC intervention to improve outcomes for individuals with complex communication needs, and to foster a new generation of intervention research that will provide a solid foundation for improved services. Specifi cally, the paper emphasizes the need to take a more holistic view of communication intervention and highlights the following key principles to guide AAC intervention and research: (a) build on the individual ' s strengths and focus on the integration of skills to maximize communication, (b) focus on the individual ' s participation in real-world contexts, (c) address psychosocial factors as well as skills, and (d) attend to extrinsic environmental factors as well as intrinsic factors related to the individual who requires AAC.

“…This paper presents and discusses the overall results and some of the challenges of interpreting outcomes data. A detailed presentation of the results pertaining to expressive communication (i.e., communicative interaction skills and linguistic complexity) and contextual factors are presented in subsequent articles (Lund & Light, in press;Lund & Light, 2006).…”

Section: Research Objectivesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Long-term outcomes for individuals who use augmentative and alternative communication: Part I – what is a “good” outcome?

Lund

Light

2006

Self Cite

Over the past 20 years, there have been many advances in the field of augmentative and alternative communication (AAC). Despite these advances, there are no data on the long-term outcomes of AAC interventions. This study evaluated the long-term outcomes for a group of seven young men (ages 19-23 years) who had used AAC systems for at least 15 years and were part of the first generation to have received AAC services since they were in preschool. Outcomes were measured in the following domains: (a) receptive language; (b) reading comprehension; (c) communicative interaction; (d) linguistic complexity; (e) functional communication; (f) educational and vocational achievement; (g) self-determination; and (h) quality of life. The outcomes for the group were diverse, with individual variations across all measures. Evaluation of the data raised many issues surrounding the challenges of outcomes measurement; these are discussed with suggestions for future research.