Dynamic Assessment of AAC Action Verb Symbols for Children with ASD

Area of Science:

• Speech and Language Pathology
• Developmental Psychology
• Special Education

Background:

• Children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) often face challenges in communication.
• Augmentative and Alternative Communication (AAC) applications offer potential tools for improving communication skills.
• Action verb symbols are crucial for developing expressive language in young children.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate the acquisition of action verb symbols by preschool-aged children with ASD.
• To examine symbol use across different communicative functions: requesting and labeling.
• To compare the effectiveness of different instructional formats: embedded instruction and discrete trial teaching.

Main Methods:

• A dynamic assessment (DA) approach with graduated prompting was employed.
• Four preschool-aged children with ASD participated in the study.
• An adapted multielement single-case design compared three instructional conditions (requesting, labeling in play, labeling via video) and a control condition.

Main Results:

• Three participants demonstrated significant differences in symbol use between instructional and control conditions.
• Three participants showed a reduction in required support levels for symbol use across at least two conditions.
• While requesting initially required less support than labeling, this difference was not consistently maintained.

Conclusions:

• Children with ASD can utilize action verb symbols with minimal support during dynamic assessment.
• Additional interventions may be necessary to foster independent symbol use in children with ASD.
• Individual child characteristics can influence the success of using symbols for various communicative functions.