Honors Program Theses

Award/Availability

Open Access Honors Program Thesis

First Advisor

Evette Edmister

Keywords

Children with disabilities--Means of communication; Communication devices for people with disabilities;

Abstract

This study examined the effect communication partners’ have on the initiations produced by users of augmentative and alternative communication (AAC). The data was reviewed from a larger study; it included transcripts and videos of a set of four students from an elementary school classroom in the Midwest. The students had a wide range of abilities. Both the student and teacher utterances were analyzed for: different types of communication functions, environmental factors and conversational factors. It was hypothesized that the communicative function of the previous utterance and the level of aided input used would affect the number of initiations. The findings support the concept that the preceding utterance and communication partner can increase or decrease the number of student initiations. This suggests that the communication partner could make adaptions to their own speech and language, as well as the environment, to maximize therapy and the student’s skills.

Year of Submission

2016

Department

Department of Communication Sciences and Disorders

University Honors Designation

A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the designation University Honors

Date Original

5-2016

Object Description

1 PDF file (38 pages)

Language

EN

File Format

application/pdf

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