Communicative participation changes in pre-school children receiving augmentative and alternative communication...

Area of Science:

• Pediatric communication disorders
• Augmentative and Alternative Communication (AAC)
• Developmental disabilities

Background:

• Children with communication impairments often require specialized interventions.
• Augmentative and Alternative Communication (AAC) offers diverse strategies to support participation.
• Assessing the impact of AAC interventions on real-world skills is crucial.

Purpose of the Study:

• To systematically measure and describe changes in communicative participation skills.
• To evaluate the effectiveness of varied AAC interventions in preschool children.
• To differentiate treatment effects from general developmental progress.

Main Methods:

• An empirical observational case series involving eight preschool children.
• Interventions included sign language, assistive technology, and Picture Exchange Communication System (PECS).
• Parent-reported outcome measures (FOCUS, ASQ-SE) were administered at baseline, mid-point, and end of a 12-month intervention period.

Main Results:

• Significant increases in parent-reported communicative participation skills (FOCUS scores) were observed.
• Improvements were noted in communication-related items on the ASQ-SE, but not in non-communication items.
• Key areas of improvement included receptive language, pragmatics, social/play skills, and intelligibility.

Conclusions:

• AAC interventions effectively facilitated improvements in communicative participation skills in preschool children.
• The observed gains are likely attributable to the specific AAC treatments received.
• These findings support the use of AAC to enhance communication in young children with developmental needs.