Improving the Social Communication Competence of Augmentative and Alternative Communication Users

Abstract

A repeated measures design was used to investigate the effect of group intervention on the teaching of partner-focused questions to people who use augmentative and alternative communication (AAC), and the perceived communicative competence before and after intervention of the AAC users. Six participants who had severe speech impairments participated in the study. They ranged in age from 18 to 49 years, had a developmental disability with the absence of a social disability, and used a range of AAC systems. The intervention sessions were conducted in a dyad format with two AAC users, and were conducted in one-hour sessions over four consecutive weeks. Four out of the six participants increased the number of partner-focused questions used from pre-intervention to post-intervention. Members of the general public, blind to the goal of this study, judged the majority of the participants to be more communicatively competent after intervention.