Receptive & Expressive Language

Children with multiple and mixed diagnoses demonstrated positive outcomes when AAC interventions were used. Per Langarika-Rocafort et al., 2021 “AAC-based interventions improve communication skills, including phonological awareness, vocabulary, requesting, and developing narrative skills, in children aged between 6 and 10 years with mixed diagnoses.”

Use of AAC as an intervention may help students with autism learn to verbalize their requests. Per a study completed by Muharib et al (2020), use of back-wards chaining and least-to-most prompting paired with speech-output technology facilitated verbal and device-based multi-word requests. 

AAC can be used to provide visual models and feedback to help support spoken language development in children who are deaf and hard of hearing. Using a least-to-most cueing hierarchy (ex: direct modeling vs expanding and reinforcing what the child has stated), AAC enabled “DHH children to more fully access and process information thus improving spoken language, comprehension, and pragmatic skills (Meinzen-Derr et al., 2021).”

Per Walters, Sevcik, & Romski, Parent-implemented language interventions that use spoken language paired with AAC vs only spoken language, result in children who produce more spoken language (i.e., target vocabulary words) than those that received only spoken language intervention. Additionally, there was no statistically significant difference in the amount of speech sound errors produced between the two groups (2021).

Build & Maintain Friendships

A qualitative study where 10 young adult AAC users were interviewed about their friendships demonstrate how important social interaction is to quality of life. Participants reported that it was important that they could communicate with their friends about everything - basic needs as well as feelings, thoughts, and emotions and that access to an extensive age-appropriate vocabulary was crucial. In addition, interviewees noted that due to complexities surrounding their disabilities, sometimes it was difficult to meet friends in person to communicate. The authors note that “the narratives revealed that young adults using AAC experienced companionship and support in their friendships. Being understood by their friends emerged as an important factor in their friendships” (Dada, Tonsing, & Goldbart, 2020).

Some might say that “prestored” or “prewritten” phrases limit the AAC user’s language use and voicing of opinion. However, according to Savolainen et al, (2020), prestored phrases can provide advantages to skilled AAC users between 7-18 years of age when used with familiar conversation partners. For example, prestored phrases helped the conversation flow more smoothly and helped users to initiate a topic. The authors note that it is important that these prestored phrases include casual and colloquial forms of language as well as idioms, and that incomplete phrases (ex: “I really like your _____) can help maintain a conversation.