Post #6: Current Approaches: Taxonomic Organization Part 2

Jennifer Kent-Walsh & Cathy Binger

10/4/2016 3:59 PM

Which aspects of normal development are addressed with taxonomic vocabulary organization approaches?

• Pragmatics: The child can convey a full range of pragmatic functions: requesting, rejecting, commenting, greeting, etc.
• Semantics: These systems typically allow the child to access thousands of words. One major advantage to the taxonomic vocabulary organization approach from a semantic perspective is the ability to store virtually unlimited vocabulary options across categories. This can afford children using AAC the same joy of early childhood which was previously mentioned as coming from playing with language, describing the world in ever-more-precise terms with a wide range of vocabulary options.
• Syntax: Children are able to select individual symbols one by one to create sentences. It is possible for children to build toward ever-increasing syntactic complexity using this feature – particularly in cases where advanced grammar features afford this to happen seamlessly when the feature is activated.
• Morphology: Morphological markers are sometimes available, depending on the particular symbol system being used and advanced features of the software or app.

Which aspects are NOT fully addressed with taxonomic vocabulary organization approach?

• Pragmatics: Pragmatic skills do not need to be limited by the taxonomic vocabulary approach.
• Semantics: Although thousands of words are often pre-programmed, locating these words can place a high cognitive burden on the child; it can be very challenging for them to locate these words. Also, the quality of AAC apps on the market vary widely and should be examined carefully to ensure that all semantic classes – not just nouns – are included. All parts of speech are important for language development.
• Syntax: It may be difficult to facilitate seamless production of increasingly semantic complexity without advanced grammar features being included in a taxonomically organized AAC system. And again, the need to search through layers of words places a high cognitive burden on the child. The child might have a clear mental representation of the sentence but have difficulty producing it, due to these technological challenges.
• Morphology: Similarly, without advanced (and intuitive) features affording access to morphological markers, it may be difficult for children to practice and develop morphological skills.

Overall, we suggest it is possible to adhere to principles of normal language development when employing a taxonomically organized AAC system with children. However, fostering all aspects of language form and function through this approach places a significant cognitive load on the child. The result is that their productions may be far shorter and less grammatically complete than their mentally represented sentences. That is, their productions may reflect external technological limitations rather than internal linguistic limitations.

Also, these systems can vary dramatically, depending on the level of sophistication. Providing layers of taxonomic categories on low- or mid-tech systems can be quite challenging to program, and equally challenging for the child to produce full sentences. For example, if a child is using a system with digitized speech, the voice output will not combine the symbols for “apple” and plural “s” so that they sound like one seamless production. Similarly, auto-features offering potential verb conjugations may assist children in exploring these options; for example, selecting ‘jump’ and then having a pop-up window that displays ‘jump,’ ‘jumps,’ ‘jumping,’ and ‘jumped.’

We offer these considerations as food for thought, as we have virtually no rigorous research examining the results of offering such advanced features on language development over time.

In the next post, we’ll begin to examine context-based vocabulary organization.

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