AbstractThe purpose of this paper was to examine preschool teacher?s thoughts about using Manual Signs as Alternative and Augmentative Communication as an aid for children in/with communication disabilities. The method I?ve used in the survey is qualitative interview.The three interviewed preschool teachers use Manual Signs foremost for those children who have a poorly developed spoken language. Manual Signs are used as a complement to the spoken language and the preschool teachers use it to increase the children?s power of concentration.

The study aimed to evaluate picture communication during clinical as-sessment and intervention procedures in paediatric care. As part of the project KomHIT (Augmentative communication in paediatric health care settings) care professionals at different care units were provided with education and designed pictorial supports. These consisted of appointment letters with pictorial support, visual schedules and communication boards with both general and specific vocabulary. Care professionals and parents to children with and without communication disabilities participated. Survey data from care professionals and parents at five care units was supplemented with qualitative data from an interview with a multiprofessional group at one of the care units.

The purpose of this essay was to determine whether signs as alternative and augmentative communication is one possible resource for children?s language development. Based on my research questions How educators perceive the importance of SAAC as possible resources to enhance children's communication?, For which children is SAAC used? and How does educators perceive child?s best in communicative interactions? have I interviewed six educators in two different kinds of municipalities with different kind of positions.In my background I lift the importance of communication for the human being, what happens to the children who doesn?t get stimulated to their language and child?s best. My literature has shown that children need to have an incentive to acquire a language and that SAAC is mainly created for children with special needs.

The aim of the study was to evaluate parents and course directors?experiences of the AKKTIV ComAlong-course (Augmentative and AlternativeCommunication ? Early Intervention). ComAlong targets parents of pre-schoolchildren with extensive communication difficulties and aims to give parentsknowledge about different aspects of communication, communication developmentand AAC. Both qualitative and quantitative methods were used. Individualinterviews and pair-interviews with totally nine persons were performed and 54course questionnaires filled in by parents were evaluated.

The purpose of the study was to examine if parents' way ofcommunicating with their children changed after participation in ComAlongcommunicationcourse, and if changes remained over time. The studyinvolved 39 parents of 25 children with communicative disabilities. 33 of theparents had participated in ComAlong, the other six had not participated, buthad a partner who had participated in the course. Video recorded parentchildinteraction was analyzed and coded with the instrumentKOMMUNIKATIV. Results showed that parents used a significantly moreresponsive communication style and used significantly more augmentativeand alternative communication after ComAlong.

In speech and language intervention, the ability to interact is seldom evaluated; rather intervention is evaluated in terms of improved testresults.  If goal-setting in intervention also is based on everyday communicative needs, the relevance of the treatment may be increased and intervention outcome may be implemented in the patient?s natural environment.The present study, as part of a research-project, is based on analyses of interaction and interviews to examine everyday conversations and speech and language intervention. The aim was to explore if there is a relation between everyday communication needs and goal-setting in speech and language intervention for people with aphasia. A further aim was to investigate if there are everyday communicative needs that may form goals for speech and language intervention.Two individuals with aphasia and one individual with both dysarhtria and aphasia participated in the study. Three speech and language pathologists and two relatives also participated in the study.

The purpose of the present pilot study was to evaluate the parentalintervention ComAlong at the Division of Child Language, for parents ofchildren with severe language impairment. ComAlong is one of the parentalinterventions developed in the AKKTIV project. AKKTIV stands foraugmentative and alternative communication ?early intervention. Thepresent study consists of a case study, a compilation of course evaluationsand an interview with the two leaders of the course.

Manual signs are an augmentative and alternative communication mode which enables and facilitates communication for persons with impairments in speech, language and hearing. There are different ways of teaching signs to persons with intellectual disabilities. One of them is milieu teaching, which is a method where the teaching takes place in natural settings. This method has proven to give good results in generalization and maintenance. Teaching signs to staff in groups has been shown to be effective.

Background: Communication allows people to gain understanding of themselves and their surroundings, which is a prerequisite for good health. The nurse may in her communication help patients develop a feeling that they are not alone in their situation. If the patients cannot express themselves and make themselves understood, it can lead the patients to feel left out which emphasizes the suffering at having aphasia. Aim: The aim of this study was to identify the components which affect nurse?s communication with patients with aphasia.

The purpose of the study was to evaluate the function of TalkingMats in a group of people with Huntington?s disease, with main focus on theeffectiveness of communication. Four individuals with Huntington?s diseaseand their group leader participated in the study. The group was videotapedduring four sets of conversations; two with and two without Talking Mats.

The aim of this study was to evaluate parents and course leaders'perceptions of ComHome, a course in communication for parents. Thecourse aims to change the interaction between the parent and the child in aselected play activity based on a defined goal and agreed methodology. Thedata consisted of four group interviews and an individual interview with atotal of 12 parents and course leaders. The interviews were transcribed andcontent analyzed. The study showed that parents and course leadersconsidered goal attainment scaling as a rewarding approach.

AbstractIn my work on language development in preschool the purpose was to examine how and to what extent the pre-school supports children with special needs in their language development. Trough qualitative interviews with four preschool teachers, I wanted to see how they work with language development in preschool. In the study, Main questions asked in the inquiry :How do teachers and support children?s language development?What techniques, resources and tools available to facilitate language development? The conclusion that I made from my inquiry is that the primary language stimulation methods teachers use to encourage children?s language development are rhymes telling, books reading and song singing based on active selection of pieces that match the children?s maturity level.And how they are using different language stimulation techniques Karlstad model, TAKK (Signs of augmentative and alternative communication) and TRAS (Early registration of language development) to promote children?s language development. Keyword: Language development, language stimulation, treatment, communication, methods..

The aim was to evaluate and suggest improvements for the prototype TIVOLI (sign-learning via computer-based playful interaction). The game purposed to give children who need signing as augmentative and alternative communication enhanced signing skills. Three children in need of signs played TIVOLI at home during 4-5 weeks. Data contained parental interviews, Talking Mats interviews, assessment of signing competence before and after the evaluation period and game protocols. One game interaction per child was filmed.

AbstractThis essay investigates what knowledge members of staff in day care centres for grown up people with disabilities have about Alternative and Augmentative Communication, AAC (in Swedish, Alterantiv och Kompletterande Kommunikation, AKK). Day care centres are working places for people with disabilities who do not have the possibility, caused of their disability, to work in ordinary works in the open market.To communicate with other people is a human right for all people even if you have a disability, even if you don?t have a spoken language or if you, because of your disability, have difficulties to understand a spoken language. When you don?t have a spoken language you need different ways to be able to communicate, make choices and take part in activities in the community.

Information handling has been a key issue for different companies for a long time. Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) is used to transfer different business documents from one company to another. This is done in such way that the information itself is separated from how this information is stored and handled in the companies internal systems. As different companies have different systems there is a need for a standardised format for this exchange. There is a big difference between EDI-systems based on what kind of EDI-standard is used.