A comparison of standard and user vocabulary lists

Publisher Website
Google Scholar
Abstract
Appropriate vocabulary selection is a critical aspect of the development of augmentative and alternative communication (AAC) approaches. Many sources of vocabulary lists are found in the literature. The general purpose of this investigation is to compare and contrast a number of vocabulary lists in an effort to assess the usefulness of these lists as a source of vocabulary items for adolescent and adult AAC users. Results of a comparison of eleven standard vocabulary lists from various fields of investigation and nine user vocabulary lists from a group of nonspeaking adults indicated that all were small in comparison to the range of possible words and all contained relatively simple words. These vocabulary lists differed from one another in that the majority of words were unique to a single list and that there was not extensive overlap between various pairs of vocabulary lists. When standard vocabulary lists were compared with user lists, results indicated that nearly one-third of the words in user vocabulary lists were not found in even the largest of the standard vocabulary lists. Development of composite vocabulary lists based on carefully selected groups of AAC users is discussed as a future research need. These composite lists may serve as a source of “core” vocabulary for use in AAC systems.

This publication has 10 references indexed in Scilit: