Chapter 2 - Message Management

Question 1

Message management includes…

Answer 1

the formulation, storage, or retrieval of single words, codes, and messages to support face-to-face, written, and social media communication.

Question 2

It is important for those who rely on AAC and those who assist them to carefully review the language content included within an AAC device to …

Answer 2

determine if it meets the cultural, social, care, and medical needs of the particular individual.

Question 3

The central goal of AAC is to provide individuals with the opportunity and capability to …

Answer 3

1) communication messages so that they can interact in conversations
2) participate in communication at home, in school, at work, and during recreational activities
3) learn their native language(s)
4) establish and maintain their social roles
5) meet their personal needs
6) communicate accurately to guide their personal and medical care

Question 4

Factors that may influence the types of messages used by different communicators

Answer 4

age, gender, social role, medical conditions

individual preferences, needs, environments / contexts,, differing life experiences,

education, social, religious, recreational, volunteer, vocational communities

personal experiences, transition from individual without disability to one with a chronic disability

Question 5

Six adult social contexts (Bryen, 2008)

Answer 5

1/ College life
2/Sexuality
3/ Crime reporting (nearly 50% have experienced crime)
4/ Management of personal assistants
5/ Health care
6/ Transportation

Question 6

Conversation structure

Answer 6

1/ Greeting - initiation
2/ Small talk
3/ Information-sharing (stories, procedural descriptions, content-specific conversations)
4/ Wrap-up remarks
5/ Final farewell

Question 7

_______ are initiating social interactions

Answer 7

Greetings

Question 8

Greetings …

Answer 8

• signal awareness of someone’s presence
• communicate the speaker’s intention to be friendly or interactive
• include a bid to start a conversation

Question 9

Greetings require awareness of …

and should …

Answer 9

culture, social status, ages of individuals involved

include a range of culturally sensitive message options so that individuals are able to signal their awareness of social conventions

Question 10

Small talk

Answer 10

A type of conversational exchange used for initiating and maintaining conversational interactions

• Allow for incremental sequence of social engagement and disengagement messages that seem necessary when people attempt to interact in a social setting.
• Often used as a transition between greeting and information-sharing stage, but may never progress further

Question 11

Generic small tlak

Answer 11

Small talk that people can use with a variety of different conversational partners because it does not refer to specific shared information.

Question 12

Rates of generic small talk by age

Answer 12

• Preschoolers: ~50%
• Young adults: ~39%
• 65-74: 31%
• 75-85: 26%

Question 13

Narration

Answer 13

Storytelling, public speaking

Question 14

Older adults in particular use…

Answer 14

stories to entertain, teach, and establish social closeness with their peers.

Question 15

Types of stories

Answer 15

• First-person stories: have occurred to speaker personally
• Second-person stories: learned from others through listening or reading; permissible when credit given
• Official stories: stories used to teach a lesson, explain a phenomenon; frequent use by families, schools, religious groups
• Fantasy stories: made-up

Question 16

In preschool children _____ of what is talked about involved some type of ______

Answer 16

9% (home), 11%(school), fantasy

Question 17

________ may play an important role in storytelling

Answer 17

AAC Facilitators: assistance capturing stories; critical to understand because individualized to reflect personal experiences, interests, affiliations; May help to program AAC device by dividing story into segments that can be released sequentially; Providing chances to practice telling the story; Indexing according to main topics, key participants, major life events

Question 18

Procedural Descriptions

Answer 18

Provide detailed information about processes or procedures

1) Rich in detail
2) Contain information that must be related sequentially
3) Require communication that is timely and efficient

Question 19

Procedural Description examples

Answer 19

• procedures required for personal care and other specific needs
• giving directions
• telling someone a recipe

Question 20

Content-Specific Conversations

Answer 20

Contain informational give and take.
Not scripted, vocabulary varies widely depending on factors including communication partners, topic, context, etc.

• Require ability to formulate unique and novel messages

Question 21

Wrap-up remarks and farewell statements

Answer 21

• Used to signal desire or intent to end an interaction

- Terminate conversation with farewell statements

Question 22

The words with which people communicate are greatly influenced by…

Answer 22

different communication contexts and modalities

Question 23

Differences between spoken and written communication

Answer 23

• Spoken: more personal references, 1st and 2nd person pronouns, less lexical diversity, shorter thought units, more monosyllabic and familiar words , more subordinate ideas
• Writing: more diverse vocabulary

Question 24

School-talk vs Home-talk

Answer 24

Children do not use language for the same purposes at school as they do at home.

Home: expectation of shared assumptions (implicit meaning)
School: Interpreting overtly lexicalized intentions (explicit meaning)

1/3 of vocabulary spoken only at school, 1/3 spoken only at home, 1/3 spoken at both home and school

Question 25

100 words account for

Answer 25

60% of those produced at school by TD children (Beukelman, Jones, Rowan, 1989)

Question 26

School vocabulary

Answer 26

Content varies across subjects, changes daily, weekly Success depends on availability of appropriate vocabulary

Question 27

Vocabulary - age variables

Answer 27

- People produce fewer proper nouns, more general nouns, and more ambiguous references as they age - Lexical variety of nominal and syntactic structures decreases - Size of active expressive vocabularies decreases markedly during 70s - Older adults tailor communicative interactions to unique task of "telling", information sharing

Question 28

Vocabulary - gender variables

Answer 28

Men: fewer pronouns, more adjectives, unusual adverbs, and prepositions; reference to time, space, quantity, destructive actions more often; topics are work, legal matters, taxes, army experience, sports or amusement Women: more auxiliary words and negations; refer to to motivations, feelings, emotions, and themselves more; topics are people, personal lives/interpersonal matters, household needs, books, food, clothes, decorations

Question 29

______ are perhaps the best source of knowledge about an individual's specific vocabulary needs, and AAC teams should use their insights as a resource to select appropriate vocabulary.

Answer 29

Peer informants

Question 30

Vocabulary - preliterate individuals

Answer 30

- Have not yet developed reading and writing skills - AAC system uses 1+ symbol/code sets - Vocabulary needs divided in two categories 1/ vocabulary needed to communicate essential messages 2/ vocabulary needed to develop language skills

Question 31

Vocabulary - coverage vocabulary

Answer 31

Vocabulary needed to communicate essential messages - Must include many coverage vocabulary items, regardless of frequency of use - Highly dependent on communication needs of individual - Selected through careful analyses of environmental and communication needs - Commonly organized by context (environment, activity; or themes/levels in SGD) - May situate activity boards strategically in environment where activity takes place , or in a carrying case /notebook

Question 32

Vocabulary - developmental vocabulary

Answer 32

- Vocabulary individual does not yet know, selected to encourage language and vocabulary growth - Should include words or messages that encourage use of a variety of language structures/ combinations - e.g. more, no, there, variety of nouns/verbs/adjectives to encourage word combinations

Question 33

Vocabulary - developmental vocabulary should include words from at least the following semantic categories (Lahey and Bloom, 1977):

Answer 33

``` 1/ substantive words 2/ relational words 3/ Generic verbs 4/ Specific verbs 5/ Emotional state words 6/ Affirmation / negation words 7/ Recurrence/discontinuation words 8/ Proper names for people first and personal pronouns later 9/ Single adjectives first and their polar opposites later 10/ Relevant colours 11/ Relevant prepositions ```

Question 34

Common core vocabulary words in Banajee, Dicarlo, Stricklin (2003)

Answer 34

I, no, yeah/yes, want, it, that, my, you, more mine, the, is, on, in, here, out, off, a, go, who, some, help, all done/finished ** No nouns! **

Question 35

Vocabulary - nonliterate individuals

Answer 35

- Unable to spell well enough to formulate messages on letter-by-letter basis and not expected to develop/regain these spontaneous spelling skills - Mostly unable to read, except some functional sight word reading - Vocabulary selection aims to meet daily, ongoing communication needs in variety of environments

Question 36

Vocabulary - how does vocabulary for nonliterate individuals differ?

Answer 36

- nearly always chosen from a functional rather than developmental perspective - Single words, or more often whole messages selected to meet individual communication need s - Very important that coverage vocabulary be age and gender appropriate (e.g. happy face vs. thumbs up symbol) - some developmental vocabulary, added when encountering new environments/opportunities, with the goal of expanding number of words/concepts rather than use of complex syntactic forms

Question 37

Vocabulary - literate individuals

Answer 37

Have access to greater variety of message preparation options; able to formulate messages on letter-by-letter and word-by-word basis, and to retrieve complete messages once they have been stored - timing enhancement - message acceleration - fatigue reduction - social media

Question 38

Vocabulary - literate individuals - timing enhancement

Answer 38

Messages that require careful timing for appropriateness - Improves effectiveness of communication - e.g. Please pick up my feet before you roll my wheelchair forward - e.g. Wait a minute, I'm not finished yet

Question 39

Vocabulary - literate individuals - message acceleration

Answer 39

Accelerate overall communication rate - words/messages that occur so frequently and are so lengthy that the use of an encoding strategy to retrieve them results in substantial keystroke savings

Question 40

Vocabulary - literate individuals - fatigue reduction

Answer 40

Vocabulary set selected for people who are literate that results in reduced fatigue. Often the same set as acceleration vocabulary. Fatigue is cumulative problem for some people (AM may be more efficient using AAC) -- so vocab should be selected to cover part of day where individual is more fatigued (PM)

Question 41

Vocabulary - literate individuals - social media

Answer 41

Communication conventions differ considerably from face-to-face communication; extensive use of abbreviations and codes, grammatically incomplete messages, limited punctuation to reduce number of keystrokes

Question 42

Core Vocabulary

Answer 42

Words and messages that are commonly used by a variety of individuals and occur very frequently. - Three sources to identify core vocabularies for specific individuals: 1/ word lists based on vocabulary-use patterns of other people with CCN who use AAC systems; 2/ word lists based on the use patterns of the individual 3/ word lists based on the performance of natural speakers or writers in similar contexts

Question 43

Core Vocabulary selection - people who communicate through AAC

Answer 43

Approximately 80% of words communicated by five individuals were represented by the 500 most frequently occurring words. AAC users actually used between 27% - 60% of words included in various published lists Floorholder messages for telephone communication

Question 44

Core Vocabulary selection - use patterns of specific individual

Answer 44

Compiled from past performance of specific individual - Performance measurement and analysis technology is included in many AAC devices to help monitor vocabulary-use patterns of an individual - Privacy concerns to be aware of (tracking/monitoring)

Question 45

Core Vocabulary selection - TD speakers/writers

Answer 45

Composite lists based on vocabulary use of typical speakers/writers - Rich source of core vocabulary information - Contains only a fraction of words that will be needed - Good source of potential words , time saving, strategies required to eliminate unnecessary/costly words

Question 46

Fringe Vocabulary

Answer 46

Vocabulary words and messages specific or unique to the individual e.g. names of specific people, locations, activities, preferred expressions, special interests Serve to personalize the vocabulary in AAC system and allow expression of ideas and messages that do not appear in core vocabulary lists - Must be recommended by informants who know them or their communicative situations quite well

Question 47

Fringe vocabulary -- most important source

Answer 47

Individual who relies on AAC system themself (ability to serve as informant depends on age, cognitive and language abilities, level of facilitator support provided)

Question 48

Fringe vocabulary - informants

Answer 48

AAC team should consult with multiple informants to obtain best possible list of fringe words Spouses, parents, siblings, teachers, other caregivers, employers, co-workers, peers, and friends Parents, SLPs, teachers -- each contributed important number of fringe words to composite vocabularies for child participants, none could be eliminated from vocabulary selection process

Question 49

Vocabulary selection processes

Answer 49

Initial vocabulary items should 1/ be of high interest to the individual, 2/ have potential for frequent use 3/ denote a range of semantic notions and pragmatic functions 4/ reflect the "here and now" for ease of learning 5/ have potential for later multiword use 6/ provide ease of production or interpretatoin

Question 50

Vocabulary selection - environmental or ecological inventories

Answer 50

- Discriminate between observation and participation events - AAC team observes and documents the vocabulary words used by peers both with and without disabilities during frequently occurring activities, reducing pool of items to a list of most critical words that the individual can manage

Question 51

Vocabulary selection - communication diaries and checklists

Answer 51

- Records of the words or phrases needed in a variety of contexts, usually kept by informants throughout hte day - MacArthur-Bates Communicative Development Inventory may be useful as shortcut to vocabulary selection by providing ideas

Question 52

Vocabulary Maintenance

Answer 52

Vocabulary selection is an ongoing process; Some words/phrases may be used less frequently because they were poorly chosen initially or because they have outlived usefulness Items for use in special contexts should be eliminated from available lexicon once not needed to make space for other, more important words and to reduce the cognitive load for the individuals