This study examines the effect of language use on the communication interaction patterns of ten children with cerebral palsy from Hindi speaking families, five children using AAC and five children using speech as their primary mode of communication. Children in both groups were within a chronological age band of six to eleven years with their receptive language levels ranging from three to four + word level. The study was conducted over a nineteen month period. Data was collected at four phases by video recording interactions between the children and their facilitators. Two intervention strategies were applied. The first intervention was the reformatting of individual display boards to include vocabulary that was within the receptive repertoire of each AAC user. The second intervention was a facilitator workshop to suggest strategies that speaking communication partners might use to support and/or augment AAC users communicative and linguistic skills. A three tier model of data analysis (Light, in press) was found to be an effective way of examining the data. The diversity of data gave empirical evidence on the relationship between use of language and communication competence, and the efficacy of the interventions used. The results confirmed existing evidence in literature that social intentions and the functional needs of speakers affect communicative functions. In addition, data provided evidence that communicative context and communicative partners have a direct impact on the communicative interaction patterns of AAC users. Children in the study showed developmental trends that were similar to those of typically developing children. This has important implications for language learning theories in AAC and for classroom practice. The major outcome of the study is the empirical evidence showing that communicative competence in AAC users' is enhanced by access to opportunities for developing and using linguistic skills. This research study has added to the existing knowledge base on the communicative competence of children who use AAC by providing evidence from a different cultural (Indian) and linguistic (Hindi) setting.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:bl.uk/oai:ethos.bl.uk:299212 |
| Date | January 1999 |
| Creators | Kaul, Sudha |
| Publisher | Manchester Metropolitan University |
| Source Sets | Ethos UK |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation |
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