AAC and Oral Language Development

Beth Poss

The Big Question

Will the use of AAC impede oral language?

And the Answer is…

NO!

What Gary Cumely says:

“Trying to determine why professionals and parents are reluctant to introduce AAC …is of great interest to me. Professionals and parents have the same goal for these children and that is for these children to talk. Both groups fear that if AAC is introduced into the intervention, then the child will not talk or stop talking. In addition, if AAC is introduced, there is the feeling that the professionals have given up on speech production.”

However, research has clearly not shown that.

• “What it has consistently shown is that if AAC is introduced into the intervention plan of children with severe expressive communication disorders, there is often a marked increase in speech output. In my own research, when AAC was available to these children there was an increase in their speech usage or there was no marked decrease in speech usage.”

• “AAC should be viewed as a positive means of supporting a child’s speech attempts and a more communicatively efficient means of conveying their communication intent.”

“The ultimate goal for children (using AAC) should be to provide them a successful means of communicating. AAC should not be viewed as giving up on speech, but rather viewing AAC as providing a means to support the child’s speech attempts, increasing successful communication and providing a strategy for repairing frequent communication breakdowns.”

Dr. Cumley is an Associate Professor at the University of Wisconsin - Stevens Points in the School of Communicative Disorder. He received his doctoral degree from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln in the area of Augmentative and Alternative Communication (AAC). He has presented at the local, national, and international levels in the areas of augmentative and alternative communication. His areas of expertise are in AAC, childhood language acquisition and intervention and language issues for special populations. Before entering the doctoral program he worked for 16 years as a public school speech and language pathologist and program specialist in California. He served children with various communicative disorders resulting from cerebral palsy, mental retardation, language learning disabilities, CAS or suspected as having CAS, and autism.

View this video to see how Lori uses her voice output to support her oral language

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•Video folder•Lori Makes Sentences Video