AAC Assessment & Alternative Access
The "gold standard" in AAC assessment
Dynamic assessment
When modeling on an AAC device, you should always model how many steps ahead of where your AAC user is currently communicating?
1-2
The CROWD in the CAR acronym is a mnemonic device to help recall strategies for which literacy development activity?
Shared book reading
Tactile symbols are most appropriate for an AAC user with which type of sensory impairment?
Visual impairment
Name 2 appropriate targets of intervention for a communicator in the presymbolic/emerging stage of development.
Developing intentionality
Early symbolic communication/establishing symbol-referent comprehension
Non-standardized assessment of a client's performance in specific skill areas related to AAC
Criterion-referenced assessment
What are the lowest and highest levels of support in the AAC Prompt Hierarchy?
The lowest level is an expectant pause
The highest level is hand-over-hand assist
Name 3 ways to adapt a physical book for an AAC user with sensory, cognitive, and/or motor impairments.
- Add page puffers
- Summarize the text into a single sentence with a related image
- Add textural elements and/or tactile symbols
- Laminate and spiral-bind the pages of a book to make it easier to open the book and turn the pages
An area of a visual scene display (VSD) programmed to produce a word or phrase when selected
Learning to decode regularly spelled words and recognize sight words would be appropriate intervention targets for AAC users in which stage of literacy development?
Conventional Literacy Stage
The most appropriate access method for an AAC user with no volitional movement
Eye gaze
Using AAC to reduce challenging behaviors by providing and training an appropriate alternative behavior is an example of what intervention technique?
Functional Communication Training (FCT)
Name one accessibility feature on a smartphone or tablet that an adult with impaired literacy skills could use to access text
The type of grid display that organizes vocabulary according to word order and sentence structure
Semantic-syntactic
An adult with severe aphasia and apraxia post-stroke is able to match symbols to referents and can point to symbols to express some basic needs but is not able to initiate or add to conversation without maximal support and access to AAC. This adult would belong in which "category of communicator"?
Contextual choice communicator
The "mover" (activated to scan through choices) and the "chooser" (activated to select preferred choice)
What does the acronym SNUG stand for?
Spontaneous novel utterance generation
Aphasia often results in which 2 literacy impairments?
Alexia and agraphia
DAILY DOUBLE!
Define "alexia" and "agraphia."
This type of grid display prioritizes motor planning above all else and is also known as "semantic compaction"
Iconic encoding
Metacognition and strategy use would be appropriate intervention targets for which stage of both AAC skill development and literacy skill development?
The Independent Stage (final stage in both models):
- Independent Communicator Stage
- Independent Literacy Stage
(The strategies, of course, would be different--selecting and applying reading comprehension strategies vs. using an AAC device strategically to repair a communication breakdown, but the concept still stands: training metacognition to select and execute an appropriate strategy takes place in the "independent" stage of skill development.)
An AAC user who holds down a switch to scan through choices, then releases the switch to make a selection is using what type of scanning pattern?
Inverse scanning
Name the 4 types of competence we target with AAC users.
Linguistic, operational, strategic, and social
DAILY DOUBLE!
Give an example of each type of competence.
Using a phonetic keyboard on an AAC device to build and then "speak" a word would be a great way to model which phonological awareness skill?
Blending
Which type of system design best supports SNUG? (Not an organizational type--think about what gets programmed on buttons)
Generative language design (1:1 ratio between words and buttons, 1 word per button instead of stored phrases)
Each of the 3 main developmental models we talked about (AAC use, literacy skills, and adult "categories of communicators") have an early "emerging" stage, a middle "transitional" stage, and an advanced "independent" stage (in the case of adult "categories of communicators," this was labeled "specific needs communicator").
If the keyword (thematically) for the early emerging stages is "foundational," and the keyword for the independent/advanced stages is "independence," what would be a good keyword for the middle stage?
Expansion
DAILY DOUBLE!/FINAL JEOPARDY!
In what ways is the learner "expanding" their skills in the middle/transitional stages of each model? What skills are they expanding or growing?