In this “Recast” episode of Talking with Tech, we share a remastered episode that was previously aired on the podcast. This episode, Chris Bugaj, Rachel Madel, and Lucas Stuber have a roundtable discussion about the key components of aided language stimulation, i.e. modeling. This means that the the communication partner uses the same communication system as the AAC user to model communication exchanges.

Key ideas this week:

🔑 AAC is a visual language, and we can’t expect an AAC user to understand when and how to use AAC if they can’t watch someone else use it first. As Rachel says, “You want to create an AAC world, and go live in it.”

🔑 Research indicates that aided-language stimulation helps an AAC user to increase the length of their utterances, improve their vocabulary, and increase their use of grammatical endings. Samuel C. Sennott, Janice C. Light, and David McNaughton -102 Research and Practice for Persons with Severe Disabilities 41(2)

🔑 Just like when we talk to babies without expecting them to talk back, we need to provide AAC users with a lot of modeling opportunities without expecting a response. Even if we think an AAC user isn’t listening to us, we should continue to model to them without expectation.

🔑 Descriptive teaching of AAC is a strategy where the communication partner teaches concepts behind context-specific fringe words using high frequency core words. For example, rather than teaching an AAC user about photosynthesis using lots of scientific words, you can use core words to teach the concept (e.g., “The sun goes on the plant and the plant makes food.”)

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