Workshop from the Special Education Principal's Association of New Zealand (SEPANZ) conference 2011. All of us need to communicate socially through our day – and it makes up a large part of what we do. We tell stories, chat, gossip and listen as others tell us about their weekends. Social communication is often estimated to be more than 50% of our daily conversation. Many students who use AAC or students who have difficulties with communication have trouble with social communication. This often isolates them from others and creates difficulties with building social closeness. This presentation will talk about some strategies for improving social communication, including visual scene displays, photo based storytelling and sequenced social scripts. The importance of small talk and using partner directed questions will be discussed – and research showing how crucial this is for people with disabilities to build their social networks will be covered. Use of technology, including speech generating devices and iPads to support students in this area will also be addressed. Come along and have fun – and learn about helping students with complex communication needs to develop their social communication skills so that they can tell you about their day and tell everyone else all your gossip!

1. Wanna Hear Some Gossip?
Building Social Communication
for ALL students

2. Jane Farrall, MSpEd, CPSP
Speech Language Therapist
Spectronics
Sally Clendon, PhD
Senior Lecturer
Speech and Language Therapy Programme
Massey University

4. What is AAC?

5. AAC System
AAC system: An integrated group of
components, including the symbols, aids,
strategies and techniques used by individuals to
enhance communication. The system serves to
supplement any gestural, spoken, and/or written
communication abilities
(American Speech and Hearing Association, 1991).

6. AAC System

7. Unaided and Aided AAC

8. AAC Myths and Legends
 Introducing AAC will stop someone from
developing speech
 Low tech before High tech
 Has a little speech so doesn’t need AAC
 Too cognitively impaired for AAC
 AAC will fix all communication difficulties
 Too young for AAC
 Doesn’t need AAC as they can express basic
needs

9. AAC Myths and Legends - Resources
 Romski, M.A. & Sevcik, R.A. (2005).
Augmentative communication and early
intervention: Myths and realities. Infants &
Young Children, 18:3, 174-185.
 YAACK http://aac.unl.edu/yaack/
 DynaVox Implementation Toolkit

11. AAC Myths and Legends - Resources

12. AAC Myths and Legends - Resources

13. Social Communication
 Social communication is a BIG part of our day.
 We use different forms of social
communication – small talk, storytelling,
greetings, wrap ups and farewells.

14. Social Communication
 Social communication is more than 50% of our
daily conversation.
 Light (1998) found that reasons for
communication between adults were (in ranked
order)
 Social closeness
 Social etiquette
 Information transfer
 Wants and Needs

15. So…. Let’s get more social!

16. AAC Users and Small Talk
 Many AAC users use little or no small talk
 This can be because
 They don’t have access to small talk in their
communication system
 They don’t see the need for it
 They think it is a waste of time.
 Light and Binger (1998) found that AAC users
were seen as more intelligent, valued and
competent communication partners if they used
small talk.

17. Generic Small Talk
 Generic small talk is small talk that people can use with a variety of
different conversational partners because it doesn’t refer to specific
shared information.
 Particularly effective for many AAC users as it has many different uses.
Generic Small Specific Small
Talk Talk
How is your How is your
family? wife?
What’s What are you
happening? doing?
Don’t you look Nice haircut.
nice!
She’s great. She’s a great
teacher.

18. Generic Small Talk
 Several groups of researchers at the University of Nebraska-
Lincoln looked at the frequency and types of generic small
talk used by speakers of various ages without disabilities.
 3 – 5 year olds - 48% of all utterances at both home and pre-
school/school were generic small talk
 20 – 30 year olds - 39% of all utterances were generic small
talk
 65 – 74 year olds – 31% of all utterances were generic small
talk
 75 – 85 year olds – 26% of all utterances were generic small
talk

19. Generic Small Talk
 Most of the age groups used continuers as
the most common form of small talk.
 Really? Yeah? Great! Cool!
 Go to aac.unl.edu for more detailed
information.

20. Differences in Small Talk Vocabulary
 The small talk vocabulary lists showed that some
words were used more frequently than others
e.g. OK
 Some words were common across all age groups
e.g. great
 Some words were specific to certain age groups
e.g. “bummer” was used by the 25 – 35 year age
group but not by the others.
 Small talk also differs based on your friendship
groups, your geographical location, your interests
and life experiences.

21. Using Generic Small Talk

22. Small Talk and Mealtimes
 Balandin and Iacono (2000) found that it was
nearly impossible to script the content-specific
vocabulary needed for mealtimes for an adult in
the workplace (although there was a good
chance on Mondays and Fridays that footie
would be the topic during the footie season).
 In this situation, the only predictable thing was
small talk.

23. Pre-school Generic Small Talk

24. Adult Generic Small Talk

25. Michael’s Small Talk

26. Michael’s Small Talk
 14 year old with autistic spectrum disorder.
 Attends a mainstream school with a full-time
integration aide.
 Michael has a Dynavox MiniMo but has recently
developed quite a lot of speech, which is only
understood by familiar people.
 Michael’s device has core vocabulary with lots of
fringe vocabulary around his topics of particular
interest e.g. SpongeBob Squarepants.

27. Michael’s Small Talk
 Michael has been very keen to interact with his peers.
However, as his peers have got older verbal skills have
become more important to these interactions.
 Michael will often walk up to a group and simply stand
there. The other children do not try to include him in their
conversations, nor does Michael try to join in.
 Some of the children Michael was friendly with in primary
years will occasionally sit down and talk with him, but
always on his terms. These occasions are decreasing in
frequency.

28. Michael’s Small Talk
 Introduced Michael to Small Talk.
 Each of his favourite topic areas had a page
built with partner directed questions and small
talk continuers.
 His old friends are very impressed with this
change in Michael. They are more likely to
have a chat with him and will sometimes call
other people over to take part in the
conversation.

30. Sequenced Social Scripts

31. Sequenced Social Scripts
 Sequenced social scripts can really help a user
to
 Get a 'feel' for the anatomy of a conversation
 Develop turn taking skills
 Learn to interact with a variety of partners.

32. What are Social Scripts?
 They support students in learning to claim,
start, and maintain turns in a conversation.
 Much of the information in this section is taken
from “Can We Chat? Co-Planned Sequenced
Social Scripts: A Make It / Take It Book of
Ideas and Adaptations” by Caroline
Musselwhite and Linda Burkhart
 Also called Participation Scripts

33. What are Social Scripts?
 Social Scripts are interactions such as joke-
telling, sharing life stories and general
conversations.
 They help persons using augmentative and
alternative communication (AAC) move beyond
wants and needs to using 'real' communication
for conversational purposes.
 Often give developing communicators a sense
of the power of communication.

34. Anatomy of a social script
 Attention getters
 Starters
 Maintainers, holders and interjections
 Turn transfers
 Closings

35. Attention Getters
 These are the phrases that start an interaction
and make sure that someone is ready to listen.
 Creative attention getters can motivate a
listener to be interested in hearing more. They
can also change perceptions of others about
the child who is using the script, by conveying,
humor, age appropriateness, and initiative.
 AND they can be very motivating to use!

36. Starters
 Starters are used once attention is gained. They
set the stage for what the child will be talking
about.
 Setting the context further prepares the listener
and allows the child to take charge of the
conversation.
 Like attention getters, creative starters pique the
interest of the listener and often get a natural
response that encourages the child to go on and
tell the story, complete the joke, etc.

37. Maintainers, Holders and Interjections
 These are phrases such as "Shall I give you a
hint?", "You know what happened next", "You will
never believe what she said after that", "It was so
awesome", It was really scary", etc.
 They allow the child to add interest to the basic
story line while maintaining control of the
conversation.
 They also prompt the listener to make comments
and naturally encourage the child to tell the rest
of the story.

38. Turn Transfers
 After the child has communicated his story, or
sometimes in the middle of a longer story, turn
transfers invite the listener to comment or give
their opinion.
 They give the child the power of turning the
conversation over to a partner, without ending the
conversation.

39. Closings
 Closings allow the child to take the initiative of
ending the conversation. This helps the listener
and also avoids that awkward feeling of “well is
that all?”
 Again the child’s personality and humor comes
through in the choice of closings used.
 Often several closings in sequence are
appropriate, because people typically take
several turns when finishing a conversion.

40. Personal Storytelling
 As we get older the percentage of small talk
decreases and the percentage of storytelling
increases.
 Older adults, in particular, use stories to entertain,
teach and establish social closeness with their peers.
 As individuals lose their spouses and move to
retirement and care facilities the need to socially
connect with individuals their own age becomes
important and storytelling becomes a vehicle for this.

41. Personal Storytelling
 Schank (1990) discussed story formulation,
refinement and storage in detail. He found a few
different “types” of stories in common use:
 First person stories
 Second person stories
 Official stories
 Fantasy stories
 Marven et al (1994) found that for preschoolers,
9% of their communication at home and 11% at
preschool involves fantasy of some sort.

42. AAC and Storytelling
 Storytelling with AAC systems has become
practical and possible with improved
technology.
 However, we must be careful that the stories
are ones which the person would choose to
tell.
 Storytelling is very personal and must be
individualised.

43. John’s storytelling

44. John’s “chat” cards
 John is an 11 year old with autism spectrum disorder.
 John uses words (which are mostly intelligible to familiar
people), signs and a multi-page communication book.
 John also has some challenging behaviour.
 Five years ago, John had challenging behaviour every
night when he got home from school.
 His mum felt that this was due to his frustration over trying
to tell her about his day.
 His team decided that “chat” cards about his day would
help.
 They setup a process to write a sentence about each day.

45. John’s “chat” cards

46. John’s “chat” cards

47. John’s “chat” cards

48. John’s storytelling
 Many of John’s old chat cards are in a milk crate in his
room.
 John began spontaneously using them with new people a
couple of years ago.
 He selects a few cards and then brings them to the new
person. They read them with him and if they show
particular interest in one topic e.g. playing basketball he
will go and get more things around this topic.
 He brings out fewer chat cards as people become more
familiar with him and understand more of his speech.

49. Maggie’s storytelling

50. http://sheldonhickey.com/maggie/All%20about%20me/index.html

52. Just how important is social communication?
 In Building Communicative Competence with
individuals who use Augmentative and
Alternative Communication Light and Binger
(1998) looked at just three different social
communication skills.
 1. Use of an introductory strategy when meeting new
people
 2. Use of nonobligatory turns to increase participation
in social interactions
 3. Use of partner-focused questions to demonstrate
an interest in the partner.

53. Use of an introductory strategy when meeting
new people
 Teaching a 35 year old with a closed head injury to use
an introductory strategy to explain his use of AAC and his
communication resulted in much more positive
interactions with unfamiliar people, with fewer
breakdowns and made the new partners more at ease.
 Teaching a 44 year old with cerebral palsy to use an
introductory strategy allowed her to be more confident
and assertive with new people. Twenty adults with no
previous experience of AAC viewed tapes of Maureen
meeting new people pre and post. 100% of them
reported she was a more competent communicator when
she used an introductory strategy.

54. Use of nonobligatory turn taking
 Teaching a young (4½ year old) child with cerebral palsy to
use non-obligatory turn taking via AAC meant that the child
was initiating more frequently and was more eager to
participate in group activities. One of her peers said she was
more fun to play with. Her speech improved and she
acquired 30 new words.
 Teaching a 14 year old with autism to take non-obligatory
turns also resulted in a increase in initiating and turn taking.
There was a decrease in his inappropriate behaviours and
he was less disruptive in class. 20 adults who were not
familiar with AAC rated his pre and post videotapes and
rated him as a much more competent communicator in the
post tapes (although they didn’t know which were pre or
post).

55. Use of partner focused questions
 Teaching a 13 year old child with developmental
disability to use partner focused questions
produced a change in the focus of his
interactions. His partners began to see his
communication as more appropriate.
 Teaching a 24 year old with athetoid cerebral
palsy to use partner focused questions meant
that he became a more valued communication
partner with those he regularly communicated
with.

56. We know how important social communication
is..
 So let's get SOCIAL!!!!!!