Chapter 7 AAC Applications with Individuals with Autism PDF

Chapter 7 AAC Applications with Individuals with Autism From Augmentative and Alternative Communication: Models and Applications, Second Edition By Filip Loncke. Copyright © 2022 by Plural Publishing, Inc. All rights reserved.  Autism Spectrum Disorders and the Acquisit...

Chapter 7 AAC Applications with Individuals with Autism From Augmentative and Alternative Communication: Models and Applications, Second Edition By Filip Loncke. Copyright © 2022 by Plural Publishing, Inc. All rights reserved.  Autism Spectrum Disorders and the Acquisition of Communication Through AAC AAC needs to serve the same functions within the ASD population as in any other population: making communication more learnable and more effective Single case studies  Barriers and Facilitators Barriers include issues such as Access to services. Level of professional competence (e.g., knowledge of the use of a particular AAC system), limitations of the actual AAC devices. Level of training of communication partners. Emotional and cognitive characteristics of the children, including issues related to attention span, motivation, and social understanding. Examples of facilitators were the occurrences of professionals with high expertise and experience, the availability of devices with a range of features that make it more likely to match the person’s learning potential, the apparent positive outcomes of AAC intervention, and the portability of the devices.  Barriers and Facilitators Donato, Spencer, & Arthur Kelly (2018): They identified the following areas where both barriers and facilitators play a role: 1. Intervention services and service providers; 2. AAC systems and technologies; 3. Communication partners of children with ASD 4. Parents of children with ASD 5. The children with ASD themselves  Predictor, Moderator and Mediator Predictors are defined as factors that have an impact on outcomes, regardless of the specifics of the intervention. E.g., cognitive ability, ASD severity, communication complexity/competence, motor skills, language use, and comprehension. Moderators are factors that have an effect on outcomes if they are linked to a specific type of intervention. E.g., Joint attention, and imitation Mediators are factors that reveal themselves to be facilitating the outcomes once the intervention is in progress. E.g., frequency of AAC exposure, communication partner perception of AAC, and social interaction through adult input at home.  The Specific Nature of Autism and AAC Individuals on the spectrum can share and show multiple similarities as other persons with typical and atypical developmental patterns. Future research may reveal differential patterns of AAC and communicative remediation for individuals with ASD.  The Visual Modality, Visual Processing, and Attention AAC solutions preponderantly involve visual processing: decoding graphic symbols, understanding manual signs, interpreting a visual scene display, reading printed words, or locating a symbol on a grid – AAC often augments or replaced the acoustic speech signal with visual stimuli. Is visual information processing more robust and less vulnerable than in the spoken– auditory modality? Speech produces a complex acoustic signal that needs to be processed in a temporal way Visual stimuli often have a more static nature, which allows the user more time to process observation for individuals with ASD showed that both visual static and dynamic scene cues were more effective than spoken cues. Nevertheless, visual perception is a complex process  Visual Perception Is Still a Complex Process Visual perception requires integrating both global perception (the whole stimulus) with local information (parts of the stimulus). A combined top-down and bottom-up process. The importance and usefulness of eye-gaze tracking: Eye tracking research is indeed providing increasingly useful information that can help in making decisions and determinations about AAC practices with individuals with ASD.  Teaching Needs Main question: should communication partners merely provide interactive opportunities and a multitude of exposure and dialogues? Or: Should AAC use be taught through well-designed and planned lessons and focused activities? It is clear that all learning will be the result of both types of stimulations; however, it has been argued that for individuals with ASD, systematic teaching is often a dominant component in the intervention. Challenges that are often mentioned are establishing and maintaining joint attention, as well as avoiding disengagement and decreasing or losing attention intervention needs to go beyond training in therapeutic settings and needs to be observed and encouraged in natural conditions where generalization can be demonstrated.  AAC and Social Skills in Individuals with an Autism Diagnosis How can AAC be helpful in learning and acquiring social acts such as asking permission, commenting, initiating, socializing, reciprocal social interaction, etc.? AAC is a form of communication that may be more susceptible to systematic learning and training (e.g., Van der Meer et al.’s 2-13 multistep requesting approach)