Download Teaching Communication Skills

Communication is one of the most important and most
difficult skill to teach students with severe disabilities
 Successful Communication is a result of the integration
and performance of cognitive, social, and motor skills.
 See Communication Bill of Rights (see page 281) by the
National Joint Committee for the Communication
Needs of Persons with Severe Disabilities (1992)
 Within the last decade important milestones have been
achieved including:
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 a shift in belief that communication instruction is appropriate
for all students
 Focus on development of functional communication
 Understanding of the importance of multimodal
communication
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From the National Joint Committee for the Communication Needs of
Persons with Severe Disabilities (page 282)
1. Communication is a social behavior
2. Appropriate communication functions enable productive participation in
3.
4.
5.
6.
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interactions with others
Communication acts can be produced in a variety of modes
Effective communication intervention must fully utilize naturally occurring
interactive contexts
Service delivery must involve family members working collaboratively with a
cadre of professionals and paraprofessionals
Effective interventions must modify the physical and social elements of
environments to invite, accept, and respond to communicative acts.
The areas of knowledge that are essential to appropriate instruction in
communication are: communication skill development and assessment,
augmentative communication systems, instructional strategies, and
generalization procedures.
Early Communication Development
Pragmatics – the use of communication indexes with the social context.
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Research on the development of prelinguistic communication skills has shown that these
skills develop within the context of a social relationship, predictably, functioning in the
relationship between the caregiver and the child. Consideration of the social context that
communication exchange occurs in is essential to evaluation of communication skills.
Intentionality – the deliberate pursuit of a goal ( child sends communicates a
message to a listener and that listener will receive it and act on it).
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Behavioral evidence and the use of behavioral criteria may signal intentionality
Bates (1979) three stage model for describing development of communication and
intentionality:
 Prelocutionary: (birth – evidence of intentionality) – communication through gestures and
utterances. Child has effect on listener without intending to.
▪
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Illocutionary: Child uses gestures and sounds to intentionally effect the listener
▪
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Example: Interpretation by caregiver that baby’s crying means the baby wants to be held
Example: child uses gestures and sounds to intentionally affect the listener
Locutionary: when language emerges and the child communicates with words
▪
Example: child says calls for mom when they want their mother
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Bates framework offers distinctions between
communicative stages but doesn’t fully explain the
development of intentionality.
 A child with disabilities may reach for a toy that is on a shelf
to signal a request to a caregiver, but may also cry or shift
their gaze during a play activity without intentionality. How
would we distinguish whether they were at the
prelocutionary or illocutionary stage?
Wetherby and Prizant (1989) discuss intentionality occurring
along a developmental continuum. In their model intentionality
is developed from children who have no awareness of the goal
to an ability send a message and then repair or change the form
of their signal if their needs are not met.
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Wetherby and Prizant (1989) explain that sophistication in the means
to express intentionality develops in the horizontal direction during
the prelinguistic stage.
In learners with severe disabilities, means used for communicative
functions can range from nonverbal, idiosyncratic behavior (eye
poking, slapping) to a variety of conventional means (pointing, words)
that are more easily understood.
Teachers can use information on the development of intentional
communication and the description of communication functions to
understand the communication behavior of students with sever
disabilities who are in the prelinguistic or nonsymbolic stage of
communication development.
This framework assists the teacher in analyzing the range of means
(the form of communication) and functions (the reason for
communicating) and the level of intentionality the student exhibits.
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Before communication intervention can begin, the educator must
determine the student’s current repertoire of communicative
behavior.
It is essential to know:
 What current communicative functions are exhibited by the learner
 What means are used to express these functions
 Under what conditions different communicative means and
functions are exhibited
 What level of intentionality is present in communication
 Assessment of motor skills, sensory functioning, cognitive
functioning, and receptive language comprehension.
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The process for assessing the communication skills of
students with severe disabilities involves an array of
informal and nonstandardized procedures.
 Direct assessment of skills in traditional skills checklist
format
 Interview procedures
 Collection of communication sample
Interviews can be an efficient way to gain information on
student’s communication behavior in a variety of settings.
(See table 11-1, page 285 for sample interview questions).
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Wetherby and Prizant (1989) “communicative temptations
procedure” where student is tempted into showing some
elicit behavior to show intentionality.
Teachers must realize that students with severe
disabilities may express communicative functions using
means that are viewed as aberrant or problematic
behavior. A student who has not developed a conventional
signal for protest may engage in aggression or self-injury
to communicate a signal for “no” or “stop” during an
assessment. Methods for discerning these problematic
behaviors are discussed in chapter 12.
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Used to collect information about the unique communicative demands
and opportunities of the environments that the student will encounter.
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This information will assist the interventionist in understanding the
communicative needs of the student, what modes of communication
may be needed, and how the learner currently functions in these
situations.
Augmentative systems involve the use of aids that supplement existing vocal
communication skills; alternative systems are methods of communication
that are sued by a person without vocal ability.
 The many types of symbols, methods, techniques, and systems that can be
sued for augmentative alternative communication can be classified as either
gestural or graphic modes of communication.
 Selection of augmentative or alternative systems depends in part on the
student’s motor, cognitive, and sensory abilities.
 Example: Students with vision impairments will need a communication
system with enhanced visual symbols, tactile cues, or auditory feedback.
Families must also be part of the process of selecting an appropriate system
for their child. Their participation and ability to buy-in and participate with the
communication system is crucial. Their input must be considered and they
must be informed by special educators.
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Gestural communication – ranges from the sue of natural gestures to
indicate communicative functions to formal sign language systems.
 Example: pointing, holding something out to show someone an object,
handing someone an object, head nodding (yes), head shaking (no)
Sign language and sign systems have been developed to offer nonverbal
communicators a symbol set for communication.
Example: American Sign Language (Ameslan), Signing Exact English, AmeriInd
Ease of which signs are learned depends on several features of the sign language
or system:
Easiest to learn are those that:
- take two hands
- are symmetrical
- are produced within communicators visual field
- resemble the referents
include:
- Majority of people in community are not trained in manual sign
language and would have difficult time interpreting it
- Production of sign language requires a level of manual dexterity
that many individuals with severe disabilities to not have
- Signs are dynamic displays of language, and therefore learner may
be unable to maintain a mental representation of the
communication utterance when attempting to form a sign symbol
Although sign language is frequently taught as an augmentative
system, few studies have shown that learners with severe disabilities
acquire generalized sign language systems that involve more than
one- or two-word utterances or generalization.
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Include a range of alternatives, from the use of objects and pictures to
communicate to complex electronic communication devices.
When selecting an aided communication system, the educator must
consider:
 Whether the student is capable of using a representation communication
system
 The type of symbols to be used
 The format in which the symbols are displayed
 The method the learner uses to select the symbol for communication
expression
Symbol selection:
- Real objects or tangible symbols – (student uses a piece of a milk carton to
request for milk)
- Representations of objects, activities, places, and expressions –
photographs, product logos, and line drawings (Blissysymbols – a type of
pictographic system that has approximately 100 symbols representing
general concepts or ideas)
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Symbol display and organization:
There are several ways that communication symbols
can be displayed, organized, and carried by the
communicator:
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Communication wallet
Symbols on laminated cards, attached to a ring
Communication books (more symbols, less portable)
Communication boards
Communicating with symbols
- Students must be able to gain the attention of people they
want to communicate with (vocalizing, pressing a buzzer,
pressing icon that activates message)
- They must be able to indicate their selection of a symbol
direct selection – learner points to a symbol
scanning – learner indicates a selection by signaling to the
listener that the desired symbol has been reached (can be used
with electronic devices)
In last 10 years, cost of electronic devices has dropped and the
practical applications have increased. There has been an
increase in the development of electronic aids for
communication purposes. The advantages of electronic devices
include the capacity to produce speech, visual displays, and
written output; the capacity to display messages beyond the
learners capability ( e.g. the symbol for play results in the
phrase “can I play with you?); the capability to store messages;
and the ease with which scanning can be used with the system.
In selecting a devices or communication systems, several
Parsimony – device should be simple as possible and still meet
the user’s communication and goals
Minimal Learning – system or device should be immediately
usable by the student with minimal instruction
Minimal energy – device should require minimal physical effort
and not result in student fatigue
Minimal interference – device must not interfere with or
distract the student from ongoing activity and participation in
daily activities
Best fit – device should fit the personality and preferences of
the student
Practicality and use – device should be easy to use in all
environments, affordable, and easy to maintain
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First step in developing an augmentative or
alternative communication system is to
conduct an ecological analysis in an effort to
determine the environments, activities, and
situations that demand communicative
behavior from the learner.
Portability
Cost
Durability
Adaptability (ability to grow with the person)
Ease with which the person can be understood by
others/audience/secondary users
 Interference with ongoing activities
 Physical/sensory/cognitive ability of the person for
whom it is intended
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(in increasing degrees of complexity)
 Accept/Reject – the most basic
 Greeting – Hi/Bye
 Inform – I am hungry
 Describe something (I was sitting over there and
he came over and kicked me!)
 Maintain conversation
 Redirect (back to the topic, get off the topic)