Running head: VISUAL SCENE DISPLAYS AND YOUNG CHILDREN

Visual Scene Displays and Young Children

Laura MacLellan EPSE 411 Dr. B. Fossett

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Drager, K., Light, J., Carlson, R., DSilva, K., Larsson, B., Pitkin, L., & Stopper, G. (2004). Learning of dynamic display AAC technologies by typically developing 3-year-olds: Effect of different layouts and menu approaches. Journal of Speech, Language and Hearing Research, 47, 11331148. doi:1092-4388/04/4705-1133 Purpose: The purpose of this study was to examine how different layouts of a speech generating device effects young childrens ability to locate and use vocabulary items. Research Design and Procedures: This study was an experimental design (randomized-to-groups posttest-only design) with participants being randomly assigned to one of the three experimental conditions. Drager et al. (2004) established three different layouts for a dynamic speech generating AAC device and included the same 60 vocabulary words in all three conditions; all of the vocabulary items centered on the theme of birthday party. All three layouts contained some type of menu screen with 4 linked pages containing the vocabulary items. The first condition was a grid-single-symbol menu screen whose linked to pages that were also set up in a grid format. On the menu screen one DynaSym was chosen to represent each of the 4 linked pages. In the second condition, a grid-screen shot menu screen was used, a screen shot of each of the linked pages was used as the means to navigate to the page where the vocabulary items were set up in a grid. In the third condition, contextual scene screen menu, an illustrated picture of a house with four rooms was the menu screen and a blown up version of each room were the linked pages. In the first and second conditions the vocabulary items were represented by DynaSyms and in the third condition the vocabulary items were represented by the illustrations within each room. A set of 18 vocabulary items were chosen for instruction and a set of 18 were chosen for generalizations probes. Each set included both concrete and abstract items. In all three conditions participants were given three learning sessions, a generalization probe session (each of these 2-4 apart) and then a fourth learning session two weeks later. During the learning sessions participant would be asked to locate 18 vocabulary items with verbal prompts. Feedback was given by the instructor for all incorrect responses and when no response occurred after 8s. The feedback given included rationale for why the vocabulary item was located where it was and assistance was given in locating the item. During the generalization session 18 novel vocabulary items were probed with identical verbal prompts to the learning sessions but only limited feedback was given following incorrect or no responses. The instructor only showed the participant where the item was located. In the generalization session, the participants were also given a free play session of 6 minutes in order to see if the children would use the spontaneously in play. Description of Participants: The participants were 30 typically developing three-year-olds, with ages ranging from 3 years, 0 months to 3 years 11 months. Participants were excluded if they had prior experience with AAC technologies, any identified speech, language, cognitive or physical delays. The children were recruited from daycare centers and their daycare workers/teachers reported no expressive or receptive language impairments, and no vision or hearing issues. The children were from middle class families. Ten children were randomly assigned to each experimental condition but it was ensured that the mean ages of the groups were equal and that there were an equal number of boys and girls in each group. Results: The children in the contextual group had the highest number of correct responses after the four learning sessions, followed by the screen-shot group and the single-symbol group. These results, however, were not large enough to be considered statistically significant. However, the contextual group

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did score statistically significantly more correct responses after the second training session than both the screen shot group and single symbol grid. Across all three conditions participants demonstrated statistically significantly increases in number of correct responses after the four learning sessions. In all three conditions the participants showed statistically significant improvement in their ability to generalize (locate novel vocabulary items) but the authors still found the participants actual generalization ability to very low. There was not a statistically significant difference for generalization scores between any of the three conditions. In the free play phase, participants from all conditions showed very low rates of spontaneous use of the AAC device. The highest score was with the grid-single symbol condition (average 1 word) followed by the grid-screen shot condition (average 0.9 words) and the lowest number of vocabulary items selected spontaneously was in the contextual condition (average 0.4 words). Rates of spontaneous use remained low even with investigator prompt; the grid-single symbol condition (1.9 words), gridscreen shot condition (3.5 words) and the contextual condition (0.6 words). Conclusions and Recommendations: The authors concluded that all display types were not transparent for the participants and that regardless of display set-up participant training is required to use the device. They did, however, note that significant learning was achieved across the conditions with very little training, only four training sessions. However, no one method of vocabulary item organization was proven to be more effective. The authors hypothesized that the very low generalization scores demonstrated that the children had not yet fundamentally understood how the dynamic displays were organized and they suggest more time is required to teach these underlying concepts. The authors note that these findings are bases on a small sample size and because the tests were carried out with typically developing three-year olds the results cannot reliably be generalized to children with disabilities, who would likely be the ones requiring an AAC device. The authors suggested that in future the language ability of the participants should be tested as it is possible that not all the children possess the same level of language comprehension. It was mentioned that the contextual condition required different hardware than the both grid conditions and in the future that could hopefully be controlled. The authors also discussed perhaps the instructional strategy chosen (a functional play context) was not the most effective or motivating to all participants. Additionally, it was mentioned that alternating the number of vocabulary items displayed or taught should be variables to examine in future studies. Comments: This paper was trying to determine which type of display was more transparent to young children but in doing so, did not use a very transparent symbol set! I think the authors would have been better off to use colour photos in their displays instead of the DynaSyms or the graphic rendering of the house, which have been shown by to be more transparent. By choosing a symbol set that is more opaque, perhaps some of the difficulty encountered by the participants was due not to the nature of the dynamic display but due to the childrens difficulty in understanding the symbols. I also think that the spontaneous use of vocabulary items was low because the task that the authors used was too difficult developmentally for the children. The children were asked to, help Booby talk and prompted, What would Bobby say? Children at this age can still be developing their ability to see the world from another perspective. Perhaps the task of having to put themselves in the place of another along with the novel technological demands was too great.

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Olin, A., Reichle, J., & Monn, E. (2010). Examining dynamic visual scene displays: implications for arranging and teaching symbol selection. American Journal of Speech-Language Pathology, 19, 284-297. Purpose: The purpose of this article was to compare how well children of different ages were able to navigate and select appropriate vocabulary items using a two screen dynamic visual scene display (VSD) AAC device. Research Design and Procedure: This study is a comparative study. A Dynavox Vmax was used to create a VSD of a doll house. The menu screen depicted the entire doll house with the target vocabulary items appearing in the appropriate rooms. The linked screens were an enlarged version of the room selected. The 15 vocabulary items were chosen from a list of object names that were found to be understood by 70% of 2 year olds. These vocabulary items were screened by a group of 45 adults who found they reasonably related to the doll house rooms in which they had been depicted. Three vocabulary items were chosen for pre-exposure/familiarization sessions and nine vocabulary items were chosen for the experimental sessions. The vocabulary items were represented in the doll house by superimposed Mayer-Johnson symbols. In the first phase of the familiarization sessions the experimenter asked the child to point to the room where the selected vocabulary item was located. If the child selected the correct room, the experimenter then asked the child to put his/her finger on the vocabulary item. If the child was incorrect the experimenter modelled the correct answer. Two out of three of the familiarization vocabulary items had to be correct for the child to move on to the experimental sessions. In the experimental sessions nine vocabulary items were presented in random order. In these sessions the experimenter would say the vocabulary word and the participant would have to select the appropriate room and then select the item itself on the linked page. Participants were required to continue with experimental sessions, up to 12 sessions, until mastery was reached. Mastery was defined as 75% independent and correct responses for seven out of the nine items in three consecutive sessions. Feedback was given to the participants for an incorrect or if no response was given. The sessions were two to four days apart with a maintenance session two weeks after mastery was achieved. The number of correct responses was recorded for each participant as well as the childs response latency. Participants: The participants were 23 typically developing children. The two-year old group consisted of children 24-27 months of age (4 female, 7 male) and the three-year old group consisted of children aged 33-36 months (4 female, 8 male). All the participants had normal finger pointing and cognitive abilities, as reported by their parents. The participants had also passed vision, hearing and language comprehension screening procedures. Parents and teachers were interviewed for other variables including: English as the primary language, no evidence of cognitive, emotional or motor delays, no experience with a speech generating device or with touch screen computers. Results: The three year-old group was statistically significantly faster than the two-year old group at navigating the menu page and link page at initial exposure. The three-year old group also required statistically significantly fewer training sessions (mean = 3) to obtain mastery than did the two-year old group (mean = 5). Within the two-year old group the number of sessions required by an individual to obtain mastery was not correlated to accuracy scores at any time, however, with the three-year old group the number of sessions to mastery was inversely correlated with accuracy at initial exposure. The three year olds were only slightly more accurate than the two year olds at the maintenance session. When

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response latency was examined, the three-year olds were faster (statistically significant) than the twoyear olds at all the time points tested. The two-year old group showed the greater decrease in response latency over the course of the study but it was still not large enough to catch the older group. When the level of language comprehension was controlled between the two groups the results were similar to the large group data, with the older children continuing to be faster and more accurate. Conclusions and Recommendations: The authors found that the older children were faster more accurate at navigating a dynamic VSD. Despite the finding that the two-year olds required more practice sessions to reach mastery the authors wondered if in a practical-teaching sense the difference is significant because the small number of additional practice sessions could be quickly addressed in a classroom situation. The authors did note that there was great variability within each of the groups which they hypothesized could be due to individual motivation. The authors suggest that ability of the two-year olds to attend to the task and/or the motivation to attend to the task could have resulted in their poorer performance even when language ability was controlled. Recommendations made by the authors for further research including looking at longer term maintenance abilities of young children. It was also suggested that the study be repeated with a larger group of participants to help solidify the results. They also suggest that future studies should be done with populations of children who require AAC devices. In an effort to gain even more understanding about how children learn, the authors suggests studies be undertaken with even younger children. Also suggested were studies to examine variables specific to the VSD including, altering the number of linked pages, the number of vocabulary items, and including displays were the linked screens are not just enlarged versions of the menu pages. (Eg. A street scene with different store fronts and the linked pages are the inside of each particular store.) Comments: By the time this study was conducted, 6 years after Drager et al (2204), studies had shown it is challenging for young children to use dynamic AAC devices. Knowing this, I found it puzzling why the authors of this study chose to use a mixture of symbols in their VSD. A colour photograph of a dollhouse was used but the vocabulary items were represented by Mayer-Johnson line drawings. I wonder if it would have been more transparent for the children if the vocabulary items were represented by doll house accessories. However, what this article really impressed upon me was still how little is known about how to best provide dynamic AAC devices for very young children. There still seem to be so many areas that need to be examined. This study showed that children as young as two years old can learn to use a VSD and the authors did suggest future studies look at even younger children. I hope that this area of investigation has begun because, as we have talked about numerous times in class, we begin typically developing childrens language training the minute they are born. Thinking about my two month old son, he already seems to understand how to solicit attention by making sounds and delights when someone reciprocates his vocal sounds. By interacting with him in this way, the people he encounters are teaching him about how communication works. I wonder how beneficial it would be for families who have a baby/toddler who will likely require an AAC intervention to be given one early on so they could interact with it the way I am able to interact with my son.