Teaching Auxiliary Communication Skills to Severely Handicapped Students

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Abstract
The use of auxiliary communication systems with the severely handicapped is receiving increased attention. This article examines several considerations for instructional personnel who must decide when to initiate auxiliary communication programs, what system to teach, what vocabulary items to begin with, and what special factors must be decided. The authors describe manual systems, communication aids, and communicative codes, and give guidelines for choosing among them for specific students. They recommend considering an auxiliary system for any child who has not produced intelligible utterances by age 5 to 8 and who has not made adequate progress in a verbal communication training program. They also advocate simultaneous teaching of comprehension and production skills.