Relevance and Speed of Message Delivery Trade-Offs in Augmentative and Alternative Communication

Abstract

This report is the first in a series of investigations designed to test a theory identifying the effects of conversational trade-offs between selected maxims on public attitudes toward augmentative and alternative communication (AAC) system users and their communication. In the current study, the trade-offs between the relevance of a prestored message and its speed of delivery were examined. Participating were 96 sales clerks. Twelve scripted videotaped conversational conditions, involving an AAC customer and a clerk at a checkout counter, were used to manipulate message relevance, speed of message delivery, and participant/AAC user gender. Following each assigned viewing, participants completed a questionnaire designed to assess their attitudes toward the AAC user and his or her communication. Significantly higher mean ratings were found for the conditions involving the slowly delivered relevant messages (both preceded by a conversational floorholder and without a floorholder) when compared to the quickly delivered partly relevant message condition. In addition, the condition involving the slowly delivered relevant message with a floorholder yielded significantly higher mean ratings than that without the floorholder. There was no effect for participant/user gender. Modifications of the theory and technological implications are discussed.

Brevity and speed of message delivery trade-offs in augmentative and alternative communication

“…Finally, this study provided another opportunity to investigate whether or not gender of either the person rating or the person using AAC has an effect on the attitudes measured. While our previous studies have found no such effect (Bedrosian et al, 2003;Hoag et al, 2004), these results have been contrary to those reported in other investigations regarding more positive attitudes of females versus males toward people with disabilities (e.g., Beck, Bock, Thompson, & Kosuwan, 2002;Blockberger, Armstrong, O'Connor, & Freeman, 1993).…”

“…At first glance, it may appear that brevity is more important than speed, since in the previous investigations (Bedrosian et al, 2003;Hoag et al, 2004), the edited and thus slowly delivered messages were preferred over the quickly delivered messages containing partly relevant or an inadequate amount of information. Given the overall value placed on speed of message delivery (Higginbotham & Wilkins, 1999), however, and the likely reduced interference of repeated words with information exchange, it is possible that a quickly delivered, prestored message containing repetitive words will be preferred over an edited, and therefore, slowly delivered message without them.…”

“…Clashes represent instances where the speaker is unable to fulfill one maxim without violating another. Like the Bedrosian et al (2003) and Hoag et al (2004) studies, the study reported here employed the notion of clashes to systematically examine the effects of trade-off choices, where one maxim was observed at the expense of another, on sales clerks' attitudes toward adult users of utterance-based systems and their communication. Bedrosian et al (2003) investigated the effects of trade-off choices involving speed of message delivery (Manner) and relevance (Relation).They found that, overall, the sales clerks rated the male and female system users in the videotaped bookstore interactions higher when they took the time to edit prestored messages in order to deliver messages that were entirely relevant, both with and without a preceding conversational floorholder (e.g., ''Please wait while I prepare my message.…”

“…To date, two studies have examined the effect of trade-off choices involving speed of message delivery and aspects of message appropriateness on public attitudes toward users of utterance-based systems and their communication (Bedrosian, Hoag, & McCoy, 2003;Hoag, Bedrosian, McCoy, & Johnson, 2004). In these investigations, it was hypothesized that, depending on the type of mismatch, some users of utterance-based systems would be more favorably viewed than others.…”

The state of research and practice in augmentative and alternative communication for children with developmental/intellectual disabilities

“…Furthermore, the generativity of digitized messages is constrained to whatever is prerecorded, unlike synthesized speech in which new messages can be generated directly [see , for a clear discussion of these issues]. Bedrosian et al [2003] and Hoag et al [2004] have recently documented some of the functional repercussions of messages whose content is not quite accurate on the process of communication. Scripted scenarios were videotaped of AAC users as they attempted to purchase a book in a bookstore.…”