Mands, of which requesting and rejecting responses are considered subclasses, are the first emerging communication functions that allow children to express their wants and needs. While typically developing children develop speech without specifically designed intervention, many children with autism and developmental disabilities are likely to rely on prelinguistic communication forms that are socially and developmentally inappropriate or unacceptable until symbolic forms of functional communication are taught. A review of the literature on teaching mands indicates that although there is an abundance of research addressing teaching communicative requesting behaviors, rarely have studies attempted to teach communicative rejecting. The purpose of this study was to create rejecting opportunities using the wrong-item format embedded into the missing item format, and to teach socially appropriate rejecting response using AAC for four children with autism and developmental disabilities. This study employed a multiple probe design across four participants to examine the effectiveness of the procedure. Results indicated that the wrong-item format embedded into the missing-item format was effective in teaching symbolic forms of rejecting responses using VOCAs and PECS. The results were generalized across two untrained activities and were maintained up to four weeks following the termination of generalization probes for three participants. The implications and limitations of this study, as well as potential topics for future research are also discussed. / text

Children with cerebral palsy that have severe motor impairments, and often co-occurring visual impairments, may often have an impaired ability in prelinguistic forms of communication. In order for children to establish intentional communication, research suggests that prelinguistic communicative competence must be in place. Access to alternative and augmentative communication (AAC) is not sufficient to enhance interaction if motivation to communicate intentionally does not exist. The purpose of this literature review is to discuss the important aspects of early assessment and intervention for children with cerebral palsy who have severe motor impairment. There is a wealth of information about the development, assessment, and intervention of prelinguistic communication in typically developing children and children with developmental delays; however, limited empirical research focuses on children with severe physical impairments. The aim of this project will be to draw conclusions from the available research in order to formulate a protocol for speech-language pathologists to use in assessment and intervention of prelinguistic communication in young children with cerebral palsy. / text

No description available.

Abstract The present longitudinal follow-up study had two main goals. Firstly, this study aimed to describe aspects of maternal interactive/communicative behaviour that could be considered constitutive in sensitive responsiveness. Secondly and most importantly, it aimed to find predictive relations between characteristics of mother-infant interaction around the onset of infant intentional communication and subsequent child communicative and linguistic development. The participants were 27 Finnish-speaking mothers and their healthy first-born infants. Analyses of the amount and types of maternal and infant communicative acts as well as maternal responses to infant signals were carried out from videotaped free-play samples at the infants' age of 10 months. In addition, the CARE-Index was used to rate maternal sensitivity and infant co-operativity. At 12 months, children's communicative and linguistic skills were assessed by using the MacArthur Communicative Development Inventories and the Communication and Symbolic Behaviour Scales. At 30 months, the Reynell Developmental Language Scales III was used to assess comprehensive and expressive language. The results suggest that maternal activity in eliciting interaction and conversational interchanges is characteristic of sensitive responsiveness around the onset of infant intentionality. However, very distinctive aspects of verbal behaviour that might be constitutive in sensitive responsiveness were not found — probably as a result of considerable individual variation in all aspects of maternal as well as infant interactive/communicative behaviour that were analysed. As predictors of communicative and linguistic skills at 12 months, both maternal and infant characteristics made a significant contribution. In general, the predictive relations found were quite specific. In turn, except for the predictive validity of maternal sensitivity for comprehensive language at 30 months, later language outcomes were predicted only by children's communicative and linguistic skills at 12 months, suggesting that over time, language development becomes increasingly child-driven. Individual differences in early communicative capacities may also to some extent mask the language-facilitating effects of parenting. On the other hand, some potentially facilitating effects of parental behaviour may be elicited by the infant's well-advanced communicative skills. The importance to acknowledge transactional processes in parent-child interaction is highlighted — both in future research and clinical applications.