Mandak et al. completed a systematic review to investigate the effects of instruction on single-word reading for individuals who use AAC.
Improving Literacy Outcomes for Individuals with Complex Communication Needs
Literacy skills are tremendously important in today’s society; they provide a means to enhance education, improve employment opportunities, develop social relationships, access the Internet, foster personal expression, and provide enjoyable leisure activities. Literacy skills are even more important for individuals who have complex communication needs and have limited speech. Being able to read and write allow individuals who require AAC a means to communicate anything they want. Unfortunately most of literacy curricula require students to provide oral responses; these programs are not appropriate for individuals with autism spectrum disorders, cerebral palsy, Down syndrome, and other special needs who have limited speech. There is an urgent need to develop effective, research-based interventions to teach literacy skills to individuals with complex communication needs.
At Penn State, we have been investigating ways to effectively teach literacy skills to individuals with complex communication needs.
There is on-going, long-term work regarding literacy intervention based on the recommendations of the National Reading Panel. Accordingly, it targets a wide range of skills including phonological awareness, letter sound correspondences, decoding, sight word recognition, shared reading, and reading comprehension skills as well as spelling and writing skills. The intervention applies principles of effective instruction and provides numerous opportunities for students to practice skills within meaningful literacy activities that have been individualized to be accessible for the learner’s means of understanding and expressing him or herself. To date, children with autism spectrum disorders, cerebral palsy, Down syndrome, developmental apraxia and multiple disabilities have benefited tremendously from the literacy intervention, including children ages 3-16 years of age. There are multiple free web resources available which provide comprehensive overviews of this approach.
Training SLPs to provide adapted literacy instruction (Caron et al., 2019)
At the 2019 ATIA Conference, Caron and colleagues shared findings from a study in which SLPs were trained in adapted literacy instruction from online modules.
Using Visual Scene Displays to Teach Early Literacy Skills (Bhana et al., 2019)
At the 2019 ATIA Conference, Bhana et al. discussed how video VSD technology can be used to teach early literacy skills.
Training preservice SLPs to provide adapted literacy instruction (Caron et al., 2018)
At the 2018 ASHA Conference, Caron and colleagues shared their findings on an online module to train preservice SLPs in the provision of adapted literacy instruction.
Supporting Literacy in Communication: Visual Scene Displays with Dynamic Text
At the 2018 PSHA Convention, Pope et al presented their findings on the use of visual scene displays with dynamic text to support literacy in communication.