Biomedical subjects

S Calculator

Publications and source records attributed to S Calculator.

3 recordsLinked to original sources

PubMed1983

Evaluating the effectiveness of a communication board training program.

This study introduces a technique for systemically observing the consequences of various aspects of treatment on the communicative effectiveness of nonspeaking persons using communication boards in natural settings. The case study of Kay, a 24-year-old nonspeaking woman residing in a nursing home, is presented. Three major factors were found to operate cumulatively in increasing Kay's overall communicative effectiveness: 1) revising the design of her original communication board; 2) training her to functionally use her new board to meet her daily communicative needs; and then 3) introducing interaction strategies to her listeners through an inservice training program. Highlights of Kay's and her staff's programs are discussed.

Adult↗

PubMed1982

The use of communication boards in a residential setting: an evaluation.

This study examines the use of communication boards by seven nonspeaking, nonambulatory, severely mentally retarded students (all functioning at an early preoperational level cognitively) interacting with their teachers in a residential classroom setting. The authors present a method by which the spontaneous use of communication boards can be assessed as to actual functionality in meeting the students' communicative needs. The students' reliance on and success with their communication boards were analyzed relative to nonboard modes (e.g., gestures and vocalizations). Analysis of videotaped nonspeaking student-teacher interactions revealed that these students rarely used their communication boards despite their severe inability to convey messages by any other means. Use of the communication boards rather than alternate modes neither increased the likelihood of success nor decreased the ambiguity of student messages. Communication boards thus appeared to add little to the communicative competence of these students in interacting with their teachers. These findings are discussed in terms of the need to assess nonspeaking persons' use of augmentative systems outside the speech-language pathology setting, in order to begin to identify, explain, and treat communication breakdowns arising from interactions between nonspeaking persons and those with whom they attempt to interact in their daily living experiences.

Adolescent↗

PubMed1981

Some perspectives on intervention strategies for persons with developmental disorders.

We present a view of language that crosses modal considerations (e.g., speech vs. augmentative systems) and places language within an interaction framework. We emphasize the need to consider normal social, cognitive, and linguistic development in selecting program guidelines for developmentally delayed persons. We address the child's linguistic code not as a set of phonetic, syntactic, and semantic features that can be trained in isolation, but as a means by which he can exercise the various pragmatic uses of communication. In effect, our interest has thus expanded from the child alone to the child as one member of a communicating dyad. Programming in the areas of mother's verbal input, expanding children's language skills, training in augmentative systems--all reflect an overriding objective of optimizing the language-user's ability to successfully participate in interactions with other persons in his/her environment.

Humans↗