VOCA use as a communicative repair strategy: how will it generalize?
Abstract
Without intervention to teach alternative forms of communication,
preschoolers with developmental disabilities may rely on prelinguistic
communication behaviors. Reliance on prelinguistic forms may be problematic
because the communicative intent of these behaviors is often difficult to interpret,
resulting in communication breakdowns. The purpose of this study was to teach
young children who use prelinguistic communication forms to use a voice-output
communication aid (VOCA) to repair communication breakdowns that arise when the
child's prelinguistic initiations go unrecognized or are misunderstood. This study
expanded the pilot work by Sigafoos, O'Reilly, Drasgow, Halle, Seely-York,
Edrisinha, and Andrews (2004). Participants were 4 young students who experienced
communication breakdowns due to their use of prelinguistic communication forms.
Intervention occurred during various times throughout the day when the students had
the opportunity to access preferred items through prelinguistic behavior. Effects of
the intervention were evaluated in a multiple baseline design across three participants
with a delayed baseline for a 4th participant. Generalization probes were implemented
to assess generalization of repair strategies across various conditions related to (a)
nonattending listeners and (b) misinterpretation of the child's communicative intent.
All students learned to use the VOCA to repair communication breakdowns. As the
participants began to use the VOCA to repair, they also began to use it to initiate
requests for reinforcers. VOCA use as a repair strategy generalized to other
breakdown conditions as well. The intervention appeared to be a useful approach for
teaching young children who use prelinguistic communication forms an alternative
method for repairing communication breakdowns.
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