Use of aided language stimulation to improve syntactic performance during a weeklong intervention program.

This pilot study assessed the performance of nine children, aged 4;8-14;5, who used augmentative and alternative communication (AAC) systems before and after a weeklong aided language stimulation intervention program. Pre/post test data were analyzed to evaluate the participants' syntactic complexity when using (a) a manual communication board and (b) a dynamic display speech generating device (DD-SGD). Results indicate that most participants improved their syntactic performance and that these gains were more pronounced when the participants used a manual communication board as compared with a DD-SGD. There was considerable individual variation in performance.