Last week I attended a day of the Agosci 2017 conference and it was superb! I caught up with former clients and workmates, colleagues, and met lots of wonderful people committed to sharing knowledge about Augmentative and Alternative Communication.

Colleen Pearce, Public Advocate, began the day with an interesting presentation about her role in protecting the rights of Victorians who have a disability.

Dr. Cathy Binger’s keynote address made a big impression. We watched a cute YouTube clip of a two year old boy at a supermarket and Dr. Binger categorised his language into four language domains:

1. Pragmatics (the reasons we communicate e.g. asking questions, commenting, requesting)
2. Semantics (vocabulary and the types of words we use e.g. nouns, verbs, adjectives)
3. Syntax (how we put words together in sentences e.g. subject-verb-object statements, questions with inverted auxiliary verb “Can I…?”
4. Morphology (the little bits of language e.g. plurals, prepositions (“in”, “on”), prefixes, suffixes, contractions)

Dr Binger’s analysis challenged the popular notion that kids’ speech is dominated by requesting and highlighted the need for clinicians to target a wider range of pragmatic functions.

She recommended that we collect information about the child’s understanding of language (receptive language skills) and use language data regarding typically developing kids to offer expressive language options in line with the child’s receptive skill level.

Dr Binger spoke about the pitfalls of aligning with a particular AAC language system or vocabulary option. Instead, we should consider the individual’s needs and how each AAC option could address them. Immediate language requirements were contrasted with a person’s long term language needs and Dr Binger outlined how she uses activity displays in conjunction with the person’s AAC system to address this issue.

Her take home message: “Four domains for today, four domains for tomorrow”.