| Twelve dyads of nonspeaking subjects and their adult speaking partners interacted together across four communication aid conditions. These were (a) No Output--simulated low technology communication board, (b) Speech Output only, (c) Printed Output only, and (d) Both Printed and Speech Output combined. The communicative interaction behaviors of both the nonspeaking subjects and their adult speaking partners were measured and experimentally compared across the four communication aid conditions. In addition, the communication aid messages of the nonspeaking subjects were descriptively analyzed. The messages were divided into encoding categories of (a) letter spelling messages, (b) semantic compaction prestored messages, and (c) picture symbol identification messages.;The nonspeaking subjects and adult speaking partners were found to change their interaction behaviors across the four communication aid conditions. The adult speaking partners spoke more frequently, initiated communication more frequently, asked more questions, made more statements, and used more acknowledgment repetitions when the communication aid had no output and was simulating a low technology communication board. These behaviors decreased across the Speech Output, Printed Output, and Both Printed and Speech Output communication aid conditions.;The nonspeaking subjects changed their interaction skills in response to the adult speaking partners. The nonspeaking subjects communicated more frequently by increasing their use of responses, and acknowledgments when the communication aid had no output. These communicative behaviors were typically conveyed using other modes of communication such as head nods, or vocalizations. The communication aid was used less than 15% of the time across all four conditions. The nonspeaking subjects decreased their responses and acknowledgments across the Speech Output, Printed Output, and Both Printed and Speech Output communication aid conditions. The nonspeaking subjects also had more frequent communication aid breakdowns attributed to the communication aid in the No Output communication aid condition. Breakdowns were less frequent in the Speech Output, Printed Output, and Both Printed and Speech Output conditions. Finally, the nonspeaking subjects used letter spelling to encode messages more frequently than semantic compaction or picture symbol encoding methods. However, semantic compaction messages were longer and required fewer keystrokes than the other two encoding methods. |
