Sundqvist, A., Plejert, C., & Rönnberg, J. (2010). The role of active participation in interaction for children who use augmentative and alternative communication. Communication & Medicine, 7(2), 165–175. https://doi.org/10.1558/cam.v7i2.165
This study examined interactional practices that facilitated and hindered the active participation of three children with cerebral palsy aged 7 to 12 years who use Blissymbolics during different activities (role play, conversations, classroom or library situation) with a variety of communication partners (peers, teachers, librarian). The active participation of aided communicators was influenced by whether adult speaking partners assumed a role of interpreter or intermediary. When the adult speaking partner only animated a student’s symbol selections, the student directly engaged in interaction with multiple peers using a first pair part to initiate a new topic and gaze direction to indicate the next speaker. When the adult functioned as an intermediary (i.e., provided no pause for the aided communicator to initiate a second pair part in response to another party, partially repeated a first pair part, held up hands symbolizing yes/no without clearly identifying them, mistakenly receipting the aided communicator’s response), the student did not have an opportunity to directly engage with the other adult communication partner who was present. Active participation was influenced by whether the communication project was shared or divergent. When both partners shared an orientation, the naturally speaking adult provided receipting responses without changing or adding to the structure and responded to the aided communicator’s self-initiated repairs or corrections of mistaken interpretations. In contrast, when the teacher oriented to the form of a contribution while the aided communicator oriented to the content, disalignment occurred until the student provided a grammatically complete contribution (e.g., the teacher did not acknowledge the content of the student’s contribution, used other-initiated other-repair strategies to share it in a different form, and attributed laziness to the student’s actions). Aided communicators’ participation was also influenced by whether or not the adult created interactional slots in multiparty conversation. After a peer signaled interest in a student’s contribution through a repair (i.e. “What did he say?”), the teacher asked the peer to orient to the communication device and then used a meta-interactional prompt with the aided communicator to provide a repair (i.e., “Tell her what you want to be when you grow up.”). In contrast, the topic initiated by one student aided communicator was redirected by adults who were present but did not design interactional slots; while a second student aided communicator eventually constructed a turn, it was built upon the talk of the adults and not the first student aided communicator.