Augmentative and Alternative Communication最新文献

On February 2 2023, one of the guiding lights in the field of augmentative and alternative communication (AAC) for more than four decades, David E. Yoder, passed away at the age of 90. A voracious reader and gifted storyteller, David was particularly fond of a quote from George Bernard Shaw's Back to Methuselah, "You see things; and you say 'Why?' but I dream things that never were; and I say 'Why not?'" That vision led him to take on multiple leadership roles and influence the field of AAC in multiple ways. He played a pivotal role in establishing both the International Society for Augmentative and Alternative Communication (ISAAC) and the United States Society for Augmentative and Alternative Communication (USSAAC). Additionally, he chaired the panel for the National Institute on Disability and Rehabilitation Research (NIDRR)'s inaugural Consensus Validation Conference on AAC, advocated for the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association to recognize AAC within the profession's scope of practice, and served as the first editor for the Augmentative and Alternative Communication journal. In this tribute, we describe David's diverse and unique contributions to improving the lives of people with communication challenges with a focus on some of his central insights and actions.

Children who use augmentative and alternative communication (AAC) are multimodal communicators. However, in classroom interactions involving children and staff, achieving mutual understanding and accomplishing task-oriented goals by attending to the child's unaided AAC can be challenging. This study draws on excerpts of video recordings of interactions in a classroom for 6-9-year-old children who used AAC to explore how three child participants used the range of multimodal resources available to them - vocal, movement-based, and gestural, technological, temporal - to shape (and to some degree, co-control) classroom interactions. Our research was concerned with examining achievements and problems in establishing a sense of common ground and the realization of child agency. Through detailed multimodal analysis, this paper renders visible different types of practices rejecting a request for clarification, drawing new parties into a conversation, disrupting whole-class teacher talk-through which the children in the study voiced themselves in persuasive ways. It concludes by suggesting that multimodal accounts paint a more nuanced picture of children's resourcefulness and conversational asymmetry that highlights children's agency amidst material, semiotic, and institutional constraints.

Core vocabulary lists and vocabulary inventories vary according to language. Lists from one language cannot and should not be assumed to be translatable, as words represent language-specific concepts and grammar. In this manuscript, we (a) present the results of a vocabulary overlap analysis between different published core vocabulary lists in English, Korean, Spanish, and Sepedi; (b) discuss the concept of universal semantic primes as a set of universal concepts that are posited to be language-independent; and (c) provide a list of common words shared across all four languages as exemplars of their semantic primes. The resulting common core words and their corresponding semantic primes can assist families and professionals in thinking about the initial steps in the development of AAC systems for their bilingual/multilingual clients.

Children with complex communication needs often have multiple disabilities including visual impairments that impact their ability to interact with aided augmentative and alternative communication (AAC) systems. Just as the field benefited from a consideration of visual cognitive neuroscience in construction of visual displays, an exploration of psychoacoustics can potentially assist in maximizing the possibilities within AAC systems when the visual channel is either (a) not the primary sensory mode, or (b) is one that can be augmented to ultimately benefit AAC outcomes. The purpose of this paper is to highlight background information about psychoacoustics and present possible future directions for the design of aided AAC system technologies for children with visual impairments who rely on auditory information to learn and utilize AAC.

Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) commonly results in the inability to produce natural speech, making speech-generating devices (SGDs) important. Historically, synthetic voices generated by SGDs were neither unique, nor age- or dialect-appropriate, which depersonalized SGD use. Voices generated by SGDs can now be customized via voice banking and should ideally sound uniquely like the individual's natural speech, be intelligible, and elicit positive reactions from communication partners. This large-scale 2 x 2 mixed between- and within-participants design examined perceptions of 831 adult listeners regarding custom synthetic voices created for two individuals diagnosed with ALS via two synthesis systems in common clinical use (waveform concatenation and statistical parametric synthesis). The study explored relationships among synthesis system, dysarthria severity, synthetic speech intelligibility, naturalness, and preferences, and also provided a preliminary examination of attitudes regarding the custom synthetic voices. Synthetic voices generated via statistical parametric synthesis trained on deep neural networks were more intelligible, natural, and preferred than voices produced via waveform concatenation, and were associated with more positive attitudes. The custom synthetic voice created from moderately dysarthric speech was more intelligible than the voice created from mildly dysarthric speech. Clinical implications and factors that may have contributed to the relative intelligibilities are discussed.

Most students with intellectual and communicative disability who rely on augmentative and alternative communication (AAC) attend non-inclusive school settings. Little is known about turn-taking and the use of various communication modes in groups of students and staff in this context. Previous studies on single students with intellectual disability in various school settings have found that staff tend to dominate interactions and augmented communication modes are used more during structured than unstructured activities. The present study explored turn-taking contributions and communication modes in whole groups of students and staff in non-inclusive school settings in Sweden. Video observations of 33 students and 30 school staff were conducted in seven classrooms during one structured activity (circle time) and one unstructured activity (leisure time). Turn-taking contributions and communication modes were examined when comparing students and staff and when comparing the two activities. Findings revealed that staff dominated the interactions and augmented communication modes were used less during leisure time than circle time. Notably, aided augmented communication modes, particularly speech-output technologies, were used sparsely. Findings of this study highlight the importance of supporting staff members in applying partner strategies and incorporating augmented input, especially aided augmented input, across various group activities at school.