Research on AAC Intervention for Adolescents with Severe Disabilities — Presentation

Kaitlin Shermetta, Danielle Kreis, Nimisha Muttiah, Kaitlin Schuessler and Dan Parratt presented and lead Colloquium* discussion on “Just In Time” Programming for Adolescents and School-Age Children with Complex Communication Needs to the AAC Community at Penn State.
The research they discussed is part of a larger, on-going studied authored by Dr. Drager, Dr. Light, Jessica Currall, Nimisha Muttiah, Vanessa Smith Dang, Danielle Kreis, Alyssa Nilam-Hall, Dan Parratt, Kaitlin Schuessler, Kaitlin Shermetta, and Jill Wiscount.   This project has modified a successful evidence-based augmentative and alternative communication (AAC) intervention for young children with chronologically older individuals who were beginning communicators, including the use of “just-in-time” technology which allows for the ability to quickly and easily add content to an AAC system within the moment during interactions.  To date, all participants have demonstrated significant increases in turn taking and in the number of concepts they were able to express once provided access to these words and ideas.
For Alyssa, Dan, and Kaitlin Schuessler, this research was part of their experience with the Children’s Communicative Competence Grant, a federally funded personnel preparation training grant (U.S. Department of Education grant H325K110315), designed to provide Master’s level students with coursework, and experiences with research and clinical practicum specifically oriented to ultimately improve results for high need children who have complex communication needs.
*Colloquium is a weekly opportunity for the Penn State AAC community to discuss a broad range of topics including research updates, clinical case profiles, and areas of special interest. It is a forum which includes faculty from multiple disciplines, guests from outside of Penn State, and students from all levels of study — doctoral scholars, masters and undergraduate students.