Incorporating AAC and General Instructional Strategies in Requesting Interventions

Abstract

This article provides clinicians and educators a useful conceptualization of general instructional strategies often used to promote the performance of requests in children with developmental disabilities, and which can be applied in interventions that utilize augmentative and alternative communication. A case study illustrates the specialized intervention of a 7-year-old boy with Down syndrome taught to make requests using a picture-based strategy. The intervention describes how environmental arrangement and generalized cues were used to promote spontaneous communicative attempts during a reinforcing social-communicative context, and explains how prompting and modeling were used to facilitate the performance of effective communication behaviors across multiple requesting opportunities. Following the intervention, the child showed significant increases in his use of functional communication, with collateral gains in speech, as demonstrated by the performance of requests. These results are discussed within the context of the extant research. Relevant practical considerations for clinicians and educators are provided.