Communication Intervention for Young Children with Severe Neurodevelopmental Disabilities Via Telehealth.
Jessica Simacek, Adele F Dimian, Jennifer J McComas
PMID 28093677WHAT IT FOUND
In three girls with severe disabilities who also received other services, parent-implemented AAC training, coached via telehealth, increased AAC requests and reduced behaviors like leading, reaching, and hitting in home routines.
No maintenance follow-up was measured.
Key findings
01Ella's final phase showed no idiosyncratic responses and AAC requests at 2.2 on the reported response measure.
02Lily's AAC requests reached 100% of trials after intervention was reinstated, while idiosyncratic responses decreased and remained low.
03Sidney's AAC requests rose immediately and stayed above idiosyncratic responses with no overlap across 8 intervention sessions in the high-chair food context.
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they foundWhat it means for SLPs
Read the rest of this summary
You get three full summaries a month, free, and we do not ask for a card. Search, the TL;DRs and your library stay unlimited either way.
What it does not show
Only three children were studied, so the findings cannot be generalised to other children. The children received other services during the study: Ella had ECSE, EIBI, and a GoTalk device at ECSE; Lily had ECSE for the first 2 weeks, SLP, OT, PT, and in-home behavioral consultation; Sidney had ECSE, SLP, OT, and PT. The contribution of any single component cannot be separated. No maintenance data were collected, so it is unknown whether the AAC responses lasted after the study. Parents needed to be available to deliver sessions, and another adult or caregiver helped with siblings, so it may not fit families with less support. The study required English-speaking parents and high-speed internet, so it does not address families without those conditions. Children with more severe motor impairments may have had greater difficulty with the AAC responses.
Declared interests
The study was completed in partial fulfillment of the first author's PhD at the University of Minnesota. The second and third authors received research funding through NIH/NICHD Grant No. 44763. The authors declared no conflicts of interest.
The easy way to misread this
Do not read this as proof that telehealth FCT works for children with severe disabilities. It involved three children, had no maintenance follow-up, and all received other services, so the contribution of any single component cannot be separated.