Research On Augmentative And Alternative Communication Training For Intellectual Disability Without Spoken Language Children's Communication Skills

Good communication skills can increase individuals' participation and independence in activities,share thoughts and emotions with others,improve self-determination and the quality of life.Most of children with intellectual disabilities have communication barrier,which can affect their education,participation in social activities,and independence living.In 2016,the “Standard for Compulsory Education Curriculum Standards in the School of Intellectual Education” was developed,which listed communication training for children with intellectual disabilities as one of their rehabilitation training.Augmentative and Alternative Communication training can increase the communication channel.It can serve as a bridge for language learning,and increase the language ability.There had been many studies on the use of AAC training to improve the communication skills for special students,such as Autism and Cerebral Palsy.However,few Intellectual Disability children without spoken language have been studied.In this study,there were three Intellectual Disability children without spoken language.Based on the assessment of the HAAT model and “Communication Matrix”,the research explores the effects on their communication skills.This study used cross-subjects multi-baseline design.The whole process of intervention includes three stages:baseline period(A),intervention period(B)and maintenance period(M).The independent variable is AAC Training.The training program is the first two steps of the Activity-Based AAC Plan which included vocabulary teaching and sentence teaching.The dependent variable of this study was communication ability.In the end of the experiment,the researchers used line charts,statistic analysis and visual analysis to quantify the variables,collected the assessment results and communication methods before and after the intervention of the “communication matrix”,and combined the interview data.What's more,this study also gave a detailed explanation of the vocabulary and sentence results.The researcher conducted three months of intervention.This study draws the following conclusions:(1)AAC training can improve communication ability.The specific effects varied among participants.In the three participants,the quality of communication and the ability to answer questions were immediately improved.Two of the participants could maintain.All three participants learned new communication way.In addition,spontaneous communication between the two participants increased,whose spoken words and simple sentences began to appear.(2)AAC training had an effect of improving phrases and communication sentences the learning.Two of participants had known vocabulary phrase cards,one participant had increased literacy skills.What's more,making sentence skills had been improved.(3)Both participants were able to migrate communication skills into a well-designed context.One participant was able to transfer some of communication skills.(4)The social validity was good.Based on the implementation and effectiveness of the training of AAC in this study,the researcher should reflect on the content of the communication layout.The communication should be consistent with the cognitive ability of participants.The variety of communication aids and activities should be designed.Future research can be continuously involved or extend to different participants.