The speech-generating device (SGD) mentoring program: training adults who use an SGD to mentor

Mentoring in speech-generating device (SGD) use by adults who use SGDs offers the potential to improve new device learners' linguistic competence. This paper forms part of a larger study of mentoring among people who use SGDs. This paper investigates the effects of training adults who use SGDs in interaction strategies to enable them to fulfil a mentoring role. Mentors were taught to use open-ended questions, expansions, and recast sentences. Three mentors, aged 23-, 31-, and 54-years-old; and three mentees, aged 13-, 14-, and 32-years-old, participated in this study. A nonconcurrent multiple-baseline-across-participants design was used to assess the outcomes. Following the interaction strategies training, an increase in the number of strategies used in mentoring sessions occurred across all three mentors. These results provide preliminary evidence of SGD mentor training success. The SGD mentors learned the strategies and used them in mentoring sessions.