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Language Development

Birth to 8

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AAC A Crash Course

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Communication Resources

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Tae/Tango

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Implementation ToolKit from Dynavox

dynavox implementation toolkit

Device Specific Resources

DV4 and MT4 Simple Programming Guide

DV4 and MT4 Creating a Package of Pages to Save to a USB Drive

DV4 and MT4 Backing up a device to a USB Device

Language Development:

Hogden-Visual Supports:

Gossens, Elder-Aided Language Stimulation:

King-DeBaun-Aided Language Stimulation

Burkhart:

Musselwhite:

Engineered Classroom

Augmentative Communication

Language Development: Birth - 8 Years

The information below presents typical language development. There is a wide range of normal development. Most children will not follow the chart to the letter. If your child seems significantly behind in language development, you should talk with your child's physician regarding your questions and concerns.

6 Months:

  • Vocalization with intonation
  • Responds to his name
  • Responds to human voices without visual cues by turning his head and eyes
  • Responds appropriately to friendly and angry tones

12 Months:

  • Uses one or more words with meaning (this may be a fragment of a word)
  • Understands simple instructions, especially if vocal or physical cues are given
  • Practices inflection
  • Is aware of the social value of speech

18 Months:

  • Has vocabulary of approximately 5-20 words
  • Vocabulary made up chiefly of nouns
  • Some echolalia (repeating a word or phrase over and over)
  • Much jargon with emotional content
  • Is able to follow simple commands

24 Months:

  • Can name a number of objects common to his surroundings
  • Is able to use at least two prepositions, usually chosen from the following: in, on, under
  • Combines words into a short sentence-largely noun-verb combinations (mean)
  • length of sentences is given as 1.2 words
  • Approximately 2/3 of what child says should be intelligible
  • Vocabulary of approximately 150-300 words
  • Rhythm and fluency often poor
  • Volume and pitch of voice not yet well-controlled
  • Can use two pronouns correctly: I, me, you, although me and I are often confused
  • My and mine are beginning to emerge
  • Responds to such commands as "show me your eyes (nose, mouth, hair)"

36 Months:

  • Use pronouns I, you, me correctly
  • Is using some plurals and past tenses
  • Knows at least three prepositions, usually in, on, under
  • Knows chief parts of body and should be able to indicate these if not name
  • Handles three word sentences easily
  • Has in the neighborhood of 900-1000 words
  • About 90% of what child says should be intelligible
  • Verbs begin to predominate
  • Understands most simple questions dealing with his environment and activities
  • Relates his experiences so that they can be followed with reason
  • Able to reason out such questions as "what must you do when you are sleepy,
  • hungry, cool, or thirsty?"
  • Should be able to give his sex, name, age
  • Should not be expected to answer all questions even though he understands what is expected

48 Months:

  • Knows names of familiar animals
  • Can use at least four prepositions or can demonstrate his understanding of their meaning when given commands
  • Names common objects in picture books or magazines
  • Knows one or more colors
  • Can repeat 4 digits when they are given slowly
  • Can usually repeat words of four syllables
  • Demonstrates understanding of over and under
  • Has most vowels and diphthongs and the consonants p, b, m, w, n well established
  • Often indulges in make-believe
  • Extensive verbalization as he carries out activities
  • Understands such concepts as longer, larger, when a contrast is presented
  • Readily follows simple commands even thought the stimulus objects are not in sight
  • Much repetition of words, phrases, syllables, and even sounds

60 Months:

  • Can use many descriptive words spontaneously-both adjectives and adverbs
  • Knows common opposites: big-little, hard-soft, heave-light, etc
  • Has number concepts of 4 or more
  • Can count to ten
  • Speech should be completely intelligible, in spite of articulation problems
  • Should have all vowels and the consonants, m,p,b,h,w,k,g,t,d,n,ng,y (yellow)
  • Should be able to repeat sentences as long as nine words
  • Should be able to define common objects in terms of use (hat, shoe, chair)
  • Should be able to follow three commands given without interruptions
  • Should know his age
  • Should have simple time concepts: morning, afternoon, night, day, later, after, while
  • Tomorrow, yesterday, today
  • Should be using fairly long sentences and should use some compound and some
  • complex sentences
  • Speech on the whole should be grammatically correct

6 Years:

  • In addition to the above consonants these should be mastered: f, v, sh, zh, th,1
  • He should have concepts of 7
  • Speech should be completely intelligible and socially useful
  • Should be able to tell one a rather connected story about a picture, seeing
  • relationships between objects and happenings

7 Years:

  • Should have mastered the consonants s-z, r, voiceless th, ch, wh, and the soft g as in George
  • Should handle opposite analogies easily: girl-boy, man-woman, flies-swims, blunt-sharp short-long, sweet-sour, etc
  • Understands such terms as: alike, different, beginning, end, etc
  • Should be able to tell time to quarter hour
  • Should be able to do simple reading and to write or print many words

8 Years:

  • Can relate rather involved accounts of events, many of which occurred at some time in the past
  • Complex and compound sentences should be used easily
  • Should be few lapses in grammatical constrictions-tense, pronouns, plurals
  • All speech sounds, including consonant blends should be established
  • Should be reading with considerable ease and now writing simple compositions
  • Social amenities should be present in his speech in appropriate situations
  • Control of rate, pitch, and volume are generally well and appropriately established
  • Can carry on conversation at rather adult level
  • Follows fairly complex directions with little repetition
  • Has well developed time and number concepts

Taken From: http://www.childdevelopmentinfo.com/development/language_development.shtml

Language Development:

Hogden-Visual Supports:

Gossens, Elder-Aided Language Stimulation:

King-DeBaun-Aided Language Stimulation

Burkhart:

Musselwhite:

Engineered Classroom

Augmentative Communication

Object based communication display
    1. Vocabulary selection
      http://atto.buffalo.edu/registered/ATBasics/Populations/aac/vocabulary.php
      http://aac.unl.edu/vocabulary.html
    2. Vocabulary Presentation
      http://atto.buffalo.edu/registered/ATBasics/Populations/aac/presentation.php
      http://atto.buffalo.edu/registered/ATBasics/Populations/aac/representVocab_1myth.php

 

 

 

AAC 101 A Crash Course for Beginners
Anyone who has sought help for a speech related disability is bewildered by the strange new world of augmentative and alternative communication (AAC). Strangers poke, prod, test and cajole you to find out the nature and extent of your disability. And there is the language. People keep using words you’ve never heard before. You suspect they are talking about you, but you can’t be sure.Sound familiar?

Welcome to what I call AAC 101. Just what is augmentative and alternative communication? In plain English, if you sound as if you have a mouth full of oatmeal when you talk, there are people and things to help you communicate by means other than natural speech.

Who? These people who know about AAC can be speech—language pathologists, occupational therapists, educators, engineers or others. I will refer to them as "AAC professionals or communication specialists". AAC is complicated and requires the participation of lots of people in many different roles. Sometimes they work as an AAC team. Vital members are the person who uses or hopes to use AAC to communicate and his or her family. (Yes you!) A team may also include an administrator, payer, vocational rehabilitation counselor, physical therapist, visual impairment specialist, manufacturer and anyone else who may be able to help you communicate better.2

What? Things that can help you communicate include parts of your body as well as assistive technology.

Gestures

Fortunately the importance of gestures as a communicative tool is now recognized by communication specialists. Everyone uses gestures and facial expressions to communicate. The next time you are watching your favorite comedian or politician ( perhaps they are one in the same person) watch how she uses her hands and face to season what she saying. If you use some gesturing, try to build on this skill.

Gestures can get you a cup of coffee in the morning, but they do a poor job of telling your friend about that delicious piece of cake you had the other night. Gestures can only express things in the here and now. Also, gestures are poor candidates for expressing things like truth and beauty.

Symbols

To be able to talk about such abstractions as well as the past and the future, we use symbols. Symbols are visual, auditory and/or tactile representations of conventional objects, actions, ideas or whatever.2 Photographs, manual signs, pictographs, objects/textures, printed words, spoken words, and Braille are all symbols. We use four main kind of symbols in AAC: spoken words, written words, signs, and graphic symbols


The meaning of some graphic symbols are very easy to guess just by looking at them. Others aren’t so easy to figure out: while still others are almost impossible to decode. Linguists divide symbols into three types: transparent, translucent, and opaque.2 These qualities refer to the guessability of the symbol–whether you can tell what the symbol means just by looking at it. Transparent symbols are easier to guess than opaque symbols. This assumes there is universal meaning to some symbols, but actually the broader and richer your experiences, the more breadth of meaning you give to symbols. One begins to make personal associations. If I’m shown a photo of a cup and start thinking about Uncle Buck’s birthday party last year and those steaming mugs of great hot chocolate, I’m using a personal association, because nobody else would think of this just by looking at the picture of the cup.


Once you know a symbol’s meaning it is easy to believe that the meaning is obvious, even intuitive, to everyone. This isn’t the case at all. We learn those meanings; they don’t pop into our heads. Also, people have varying ability to decode symbols. So they must be taught. Today, I may see a photograph of a cup and say to myself, "Yep, that’s a cup all right," but I wouldn’t know a cup is a cup if my mother hadn’t pointed to a cup and screamed the word "cup" into my ear forty zillion times when I was a toddler. Teaching the meaning of the graphic symbols to be used on a communication display is one of the keys to AAC success, yet it often gets overlooked in the rush to do other things. Remember, nothing can be assumed.


Graphics symbols and communication displays

Now let’s look at how graphic symbols are used on non-electronic communication devices. The primary feature of these aids is the communication display. Communication display is a logical arrangement of language items grouped within physical boundaries for easy access.3 Communication displays include letter boards, alphabet cards, symbol boards, eye gaze systems and even pictures on the bathtub wall. While non-electric communication displays are often considered slow and inefficient, they can be extremely quick when used by a skilled communicator talking to an equally skilled partner.

Communication displays are fairly inexpensive and easy to make. The tricky (and costly) part is the design. Much thought and activity goes into a communication display before it is actually produced. One of the most important elements the AAC team works on is vocabulary selection. No matter who you are, adult or child , vocabulary is your potential key to power. People who control what goes on your communication display control what you do with your life by deciding what you say. It is vital that you and your family play a critical role in the selection of the vocabulary. You need lots of it–more than you think, and you’ll need even more as you go along.

Once the vocabulary is selected, graphic symbols that will best express it and will work best for you and your communication partners are selected. The whole AAC team, especially the consumer and family must understand the rationale for selecting the graphic symbols that will be used.

The communication display designer(s) consider the size and arrangement for symbols, and a person’s reaching and pointing abilities. These and many other physical and cognitive factors go into the design of a communication display before any symbols are arranged on a surface.

Organizing a display

Once you decide on the physical shape of the display and the symbols to use, the next task is to organize them in a logical way. I am a chronic reader. I read everything I can get my hands on. If I were to dump everything I read in the middle of the living room floor, not only would I make my wife very unhappy, I would never be able to find anything I wanted, so I categorize my reading materials in various ways.

The same thing applies to communication displays. You can’t start dumping language items on a display every which way and expect them to be easy to use. Language items must be organized in some sort of logical manner. Here are some of the ways to do this.3, 12

Thematic: groupings based on events such as going out to eat, watching a baseball game, attending church or visiting grandmother.
Categorical: groupings based on categories such as clothes, food, people, or feelings.
Semantic and syntactic: groupings based on knowledge of grammar.
Alphabetic: groupings based on the alphabet.
Frequency of use: groupings based on placing the most frequently used symbols on the display where they can be easily accessed.
The person who will be using the communication will depend on your needs and skills, as well as those of your partners. One person’s intuitively logical organization is another’s hodge-podge.

The phase "only one to a customer" definitely does not apply to communication displays. You will probably get several at a crack and acquire more over time as your communication universes expand. You’ll want one for each activity that you do; whether you are on the job, at home watching television or at the old ballpark enjoying a hot dog and a beer, you’ll need to communicate.

Sign language

Another way to communicate is with sign language. It was developed in France in the eighteenth century for use by people with hearing impairments. Sign language has spread through the world with as many variations as there are countries. People in the United States primarily use American Sign Language (ASL).15

Great interest has been shown in teaching sign language to people with significant communication disabilities. This interest was inspired in part by attempts to teach sign language to chimpanzees. If a chimp could learn to communicate with sign language, why couldn’t a person with mental retardation? 5

People who successfully use manual signs have good motor sequencing skills and have the cognitive ability to associate a hand movement with a particular object or event.8

Since sign language is an unaided communication system, you don’t need anything but your body to use it; it can’t get lost; it can’t be broken; and you can’t forget to bring it with you.8 On the other hand, there are some major disadvantages to sign language. Both communication partners must know sign language, and this limits whom you can talk to. Institutional settings present special problems for people who use sign. Because of staff turnover, staff must continually be trained and retrained in the use of sign.8

The use of sign language by people who hear and don’t speak is not the best choice for as many people as initially thought, and it is never the only choice. Still, manual signs are useful for many people.

The importance of environment

The environment of a person affects how successful she will be in learning various components of her communication system. If the person does not live in an environment that accepts AAC as a meaningful form of communication, learning will not occur.5 An ideal learning environment is filled with social interaction. Social interaction among learners and competent AAC communicators is particularly important. But the reality is that most people do not live in this kind of environment.

Which gestures, AAC symbols, aids, signs and devices you end up using depends on what you are like. Your communication system must fit YOU: your preferences, attitudes, commitment to learning and abilities. You will know your system, with all its AAC components, is working for you when it gives you the ability to exert power, affect your environment and spontaneously indicate your ideas and desires.

This article appears in AS Volume 1, # 1. (Site link:http://www.augcominc.com/articles/as1_1_2.html)

DOCUMENTS

 

Links

United States Society for Alternative & Augmentative Communication

http://www.ussaac.org/

Augmentative and Alternative Communication (AAC) Connecting Young Kids (YAACK) Home Page

 

 

 

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