Effect of AAC intervention on communication within social routines from preschool-age emerging symbolic communicators with developmental disabilities

Preschool-age children learn, build social connections, and develop language through social interactions. Preschool-age emerging symbolic communicators with developmental disabilities require augmentative and alternative communication (AAC) intervention to communicate linguistically (i.e., using language) in social interactions. The current study evaluated the effect of an AAC intervention including high-tech color photo visual scene displays (VSDs) and least-to-most prompting on linguistic communication in social routines within song singing activities from six preschoolers who were emerging symbolic communicators and had developmental disabilities, including autism. The study used a multiple baseline across participants single-subject research design. All six participants demonstrated increased linguistic communication in the social routines as the result of the AAC intervention, though variability in communication was observed across and within participants. Furthermore, increases in communication within the routines largely maintained after prompting was removed in the maintenance phase. Increases also largely generalized to linguistic communication using a high-tech grid display featuring the same color photos from the VSDs as representation. More research is needed, but the current intervention is a promising approach to supporting emerging symbolic communicators in communicating linguistically in social routines.