A fruitful collaboration between Cathy Binger, a professor at UNM’s Speech & Hearing Sciences, and Jennifer Kent-Walsh, founder and professor at the University of Central Florida (UCF)’s Assistive Technology Center, is offering hope to families seeking to improve their children's communication skills. The duo has recently been awarded a $3 million grant from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) for their joint Augmentative and Alternative Communication (AAC) Labs and related research.
AAC is a field that includes methods and tools designed to supplement or replace speech and writing for individuals with spoken or written impairments. "We’ve been building this program of research from the inception of our research careers, and this current project is the next logical step in improving language outcomes for children who cannot use their speech to communicate effectively,” said Binger.
Kent-Walsh added that communication is a fundamental human right that should be supported for all. She credited their accomplishments thus far to teamwork.
The grant will fund further development of official interventions in the AAC field. These interventions focus not only on communication technologies but also on building language skills. This combined emphasis on vocabulary, grammar, and language displays through AAC represents an emerging area in the speech-language pathology field.
Binger elaborated on their approach using the popular children's book Clifford the Big Red Dog as an example. Clinicians can establish communication patterns with children using symbols that refer to vocabulary in the book via apps on tablets or mobile devices.
"Children who are preliterate and who have functional vision typically use picture symbols to help them communicate," explained Binger. "These kinds of displays allow the child to see the vocabulary they need to talk about the story while simultaneously working to develop their sentence-building skills."
The clinician supports these symbols using techniques such as modeling and wait time, allowing children over time to progress from simple one- or two-word productions to complete sentences.
This method benefits a wide range of children, including those with cerebral palsy, Down syndrome, autism spectrum disorder, and childhood apraxia of speech, as well as other lesser-known syndromes like velocardiofacial syndrome and Prader-Willi syndrome. AAC could also be useful in early intervention stages.
Binger and Kent-Walsh's previous large-scale intervention studies demonstrated the success of their approach. The current project aims to use these past lessons and data to establish a range of measures for monitoring language progress.
Kent-Walsh highlighted the feedback from families of children using AAC and their service providers, which underscores the potential assistive technology holds when combined with customized language therapy.
The partnership between Binger and Kent-Walsh has provided valuable clinical and research experiences for numerous students over the years. "Our students regularly report that they find these experiences to be invaluable: they are better prepared for their clinically-focused classes, they learn how to work as a team, and they learn critical clinical skills that they will carry forward into their own clinical practice,” said Binger.
However, despite this progress, there is still a significant need for AAC to become more commonplace in assisting these children. "For the children we work with, the biggest challenge is ensuring that all children who could benefit from AAC get access to effective AAC assessments and interventions," said Binger.
In conclusion, Binger expressed gratitude towards fellow team members UCF Project Manager Nancy Harrington, UCF Community Innovation and Education Professor Debbie Hahs-Vaughn, and University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee Professor John Heilmann. She also praised UNM’s Speech & Hearing Department as a hidden gem at UNM.
