“Reach for the Stars”: Five Principles for the Next 25 Years of AAC

The Changing Face of Augmentative and Alternative Communication: Past, Present, and Future Challenges

“…For example, when Light, Page, Curran, and Pitkin (2007) investigated children's designs of technologies to meet the needs of children with speech and motor impairments, they found that the children valued technologies that seamlessly integrated a wide range of functionssocial interaction, communication, play, entertainment (music, video), telecommunication (cell phone, social media), art, even companionship. Similarly, adults who require AAC report the need for integrated access to a wide range of functions if they are to successfully participate in work, community, family, and social activities (e.g., Kennedy, 2010;Trembath, Balandin, Stancliffe, & Togher, 2010;Williams et al, 2008). Unfortunately, current AAC technologies, even those that support multiple functions, still require individuals to toggle between these different functions; they do not readily support the integrated use of communication within other activities.…”

“…Along with the changes in the population of individuals who are receiving or would benefit from AAC services, there have also been dramatic shifts in recognition of the scope of communication needs that must be addressed in intervention (Simeonsson, Björk-Åkesson, & Lollar, 2012;Williams, Krezman, & McNaughton, 2008). Historically, research and clinical practice in the AAC field focused solely on augmenting or replacing speech and enhancing face-to-face communication.…”

Revisiting Communicative Competence in Augmentative and Alternative Communication

“…Several scholars [28,37,38,39,40] have argued that communicative competence is perceived by assessing the performed communication repertoires of two naturally verbal people during their dyadic communication. Along the same lines, communicative competence in AAC practice should be assessed in relation to the communication repertoires demonstrated by two communication participants (e.g., a person who uses AAC and a natural speaker) in their dyadic communication.…”

“…Only performance can be perceived [37,38], with competence predicted by performance [28,37,39]. Chomsky [28], Cooley and Roach [37], Dore [38], Vygotsky [39], and Williams et al [40] agreed that communicative competence is revealed through participants' performance of communication repertoires (i.e., behaviors) in natural communication environments [28,37,38,39,40]. Spitzberg and Cupach [52] and Tsai [13] noted that communicative competence in dyadic communication can be perceived using three different methods: (1) speakers' reports, (2) communication partners' reports, and (3) third-party observation.…”

“…Tsai therefore recommended that communicative competence be conceptualized by integrating four approaches: (1) the cognitive approach [28], (2) the behavioral/social approach [27], (3) the relational competence approach [8], and (4) the language development approach [29]. The nature of communicative competence in the interactions of naturally verbal people relates to its dyadic, learned, co-constructed, and relative aspects, as well to performance-based perception [8,23,28,30,31,32,33,34,35,36,37,38,39,40]. …”