AAC Intervention Research: Navigating Complexity and Emerging Trends
"Unlock the potential of augmentative and alternative communication by understanding the latest research complexities and how they lead to more effective interventions."
Intervention, broadly defined, involves modifying a participant's environment to change behavior. In augmentative and alternative communication (AAC), this means intervening to improve communication skills, impacting the user, their family, education, and vocational prospects. AAC intervention research generates new knowledge by systematically studying AAC delivery, paving the way for replication and practical application in clinical and educational settings.
Advancing the field requires creating and evaluating clinically relevant interventions that support the teaching of skills, so individuals can communicate effectively in real-world situations. These interventions must cater to a diverse population with congenital and acquired diagnoses across their lifespan. AAC interventions act as catalysts for change, and AAC intervention research focuses on gaining new knowledge through planned studies that can be replicated and translated into practice.
This article highlights the complexities inherent in AAC intervention research, considering contributing components and broader directions for behavioral sciences. It emphasizes the commitment to understanding how interventions affect change and their broader impact on the field and AAC users.
Understanding AAC Intervention Research Complexity
The field of AAC has made significant strides in advancing the study of AAC interventions. AAC interventions continue to evolve. It's essential to consider present-day interventions and future needs.
- Theoretical Frameworks: Influence how studies are framed, implemented, and interpreted. Frameworks can be psycholinguistic, behavioral, or communication-based.
- Research Designs: Have evolved from case studies to single-subject designs and randomized control trials. Some question whether single-subject designs are the only viable option due to the low-incidence and variability in participant populations.
- Components of Intervention Protocols: Include dosage, frequency, duration, and intensity, as well as the fidelity of the intervention. Studies that manipulate these components can yield impactful outcomes.
- Measurement of Change: Involves assessing short- and long-term outcomes. Traditional approaches use difference scores between measurement time points, while individual growth curve analyses model a person's response to intervention over time.
The Future of AAC Intervention
AAC intervention has evolved significantly over the past 30 years. This article has discussed some of the complexities of AAC intervention research and dimensions unique to AAC interventions, while highlighting emerging trends in research and its dissemination. As with other behavioral interventions, it's important to consider how to integrate these long-standing issues into our studies.
What we need are integrative studies that span multiple dimensions of research design and methods. Integrating all of these dimensions into each AAC intervention study, however, is a challenging task.
Conducting AAC intervention research is not for the faint of heart! It is a time- and labor-intensive commitment to understanding how change occurs when an intervention is delivered, including all the moving parts, and its broader impact on the field and the people who use AAC. We look forward to continuing the conversation and the research!