Maggie Kearns SPED 461 Communication Assessment Project

Student Profile LZ is a sixteen-year-old male student at Centennial High School. He has an intellectual disability as well as a hearing impairment. He has had a cochlear implant for many years. LZ spends the majority of his school day in the functional life skills classroom at Centennial, as well as participating in a general education art class. He works at Huff Hall two afternoons a week and goes into the community with his classmates and teachers every other afternoon. He understands sign language and has an interpreter for two classes of his day. LZ has very high receptive communication skills and works very hard to do the best that he can in all areas. He does very well with routines, associating certain skills that he has learned with the routine in which he has learned them. He performs very well from modeling done by others to demonstrate skills or actions. LZ has a great motor memory, which is beneficial when he is using his AAC device. He enjoys independence, and is rewarded from the ability to perform a task or activity on his own. Sometimes he gets so distracted by objects that he is interested in that it interferes with his learning and work (Summer Puckett, Personal Communication, 10/4/13). He does not have many expressive communication skills, which contribute to a lack of knowledge on exactly how high his receptive skills are. The overall goal for LZ is that he gains functional communication skills to use in his every day life to communicate wants and needs to others around him.

Expressive Communication LZ struggles with expressive communication. He attempts to communicate to others, but has difficulty with actually doing so and accurately communicating his message. He uses a few words, including yeah and no, some signs (e.g. colors, thank you, bathroom, work, etc.), gestures such as pointing, shaking, and nodding his head, and the use of Proloquo2Go in

some settings. His most common form of expressive communication is what the speech pathologist called a vocalization, which is essentially a noise that he often makes that sounds like he is trying to say a word but does not actually form one. He attempts to combine all of these communication methods to portray his message, but even the combination of them all is difficult to comprehend. LZ rarely initiates communication with others, but will initiate it after being prompted to do so. He is not proficient at getting the attention of someone that he would like to communicate with (e.g. tapping their shoulder, coming into their eyesight, etc.); an area that would be beneficial for him to improve on. He responds to communication from others, but not every time. Sometimes if someone initiates a communication with him, he will ignore it and continue whatever task or activity he was doing to begin with. He has demonstrated this to me before when he walks into the classroom and I say, Hi, LZ and he walks right past me without acknowledging my greeting. This action can appear as rude, especially when he is around individuals that do not know him. LZ responds immediately to the majority of questions that are asked of him. He answers yes/no questions with a verbal response of yeah or no and shakes or nods his head accordingly. To questions that are not yes/no, he provides a vocalization that sounds similar to yeah, but does not accurately answer the question. He sometimes uses body movements to answer the questions, such as pointing or showing an object. LZ uses laughter to express happiness and thoroughly enjoys doing so. Additionally, when he is feeling upset, such as when we thinks he has done something wrong, he gets a very scrunched face that appears as though he may cry and he puts his head in his hands. His emotions are usually very evident.

Receptive Communication Skills LZ has very high receptive communication skills, especially compared to his expressive skills. The speech pathologist and hearing impaired teacher both agree that his receptive communication is most likely higher than anyone can prove because of his lack of expressive communication skills; skills that would allow him to better demonstrate receptive skills. He responds very well to clear communication, such as very explicit instructions. He has mastered following one-step directions and is at about 70% proficiency for two-step directions (Tanna Wright, Summer Puckett, Personal Communication, 10/4/13). As he demonstrated while playing UNO when I observed him during lunch on 10/9/13, he can listen to the directions to a game and understand how to play after seeing an example (with some prompts). He accurately answers yes or no questions and can use some sign or messages on his AAC device to answer other questions, demonstrating that he understands what is being asked. LZ responds to verbal prompts very well and often exceeds expectations with his understanding of communication being directed at him or around him. His reception skills are very high.

Social and Interaction LZ is a very friendly person, although he rarely initiates social interactions. Most often, he responds when someone else initiates social interactions, but frequently does not continue the interaction unless the communication partner is carrying it along. He is conscious of how people feel towards him and does not want to disappoint others, which is evident when he shows shame by scrunching his face and putting it in his hands when he thinks that someone is mad at him.

He uses his typical communication methods during social interactions, including vocalizations, a few words, sign, gestures, and his AAC device when he has it. He often must be prompted to use his AAC device, but once he is prompted he is able to use it independently. He enjoys doing activities with peers, such as playing games, but does not take part in many social communications during these activities. A major goal for LZ is to initiate social interactions with others (Tanna Wright and Summer Puckett, Personal Communication, 10/4/13).

Assistive Technology LZ uses Proloque2Go on the iPad in some settings throughout the day. He is a bit hesitant in general to using the Proloquo2Go, but he uses it quite well when prompted to do so. This hesitation may stem from in fifth grade when the use of a PRC device was tried with him, but he completely rejected the device. A slow introduction to Proloquo2Go on the iPad has been successful in getting LZ to use this AAC device. According to the speech pathologist and hearing impaired teacher, he uses the device each day while doing work in the cafeteria during 2nd hour, to do greetings in the hallway with hall monitors and other staff throughout the school building during 3rd hour, and in the community during the afternoons. LZ operates the device by starting at the home page and selecting the environment that he is in (e.g. community, work, bowling, etc.) and then maneuvering the pages from there to find the message that he would like. If a new phrase is added to the program, someone will show him how to get to that message and then allow him to practice a couple of times. After that, he is mostly able to find the message again without a problem.

LZ does not initiate using the device most of the time, but once he knows it to be part of a routine he will use it. This became apparent to me when we went around the school and wiped down tables in the hallways that hall monitors use. He knew that when someone spoke to him he was supposed to take out his iPad and respond to him or her with a phrase or question. In other settings, such as when he is going around with the snack cart to sell items to students and staff, he does not regularly use his AAC device, so he does not independently initiate the use of it in this setting. LZ attempts to make some of the messages work in situations that they do not make sense. An example of this is when we were in the hallway with his device and a hall monitor asked him what he did over the weekend, and he responded with, How are you. In order to increase the accurate responses to questions from others, more messages must be added to his pages on Proloquo2Go to provide him the opportunity to correctly answer. Increasing LZs use of the AAC device would allow for him to communicate with people that do not understand the sing language that he uses or his personal symbols for items, activities, and other elements of daily life.

Preferences and Nonpreferences LZ is very interested in some material items. He thoroughly enjoys collect Polar Pop cups to use to store his coin collection. Although this is a problem at some points in the day because he attempts to take the cups out of the trashcans around school, earning clean Polar Pop cups can be used as a reward, giving him an appropriate opportunity to focus his attention on the cups. His next preference for reinforcement according to the preference assessment was getting to use the iPad. This can be used as reinforcement by allowing him to use the iPad for recreational use for a certain amount of time. The next item he chose during the preference assessment was Oreos.

Unlike other material items that may cause issues when it is time to stop using them, Oreos can be eaten and then will no longer be a factor. The next two items that LZ indicated he preferred are pennies and quarters, which he enjoys collecting. He can be rewarded for appropriate communication by earning a few coins; a cheap way to reward him. He can also be rewarded with free time to look at and play around with his coins. LZ showed very little interest in the magazines and Skittles options compared to the excitement that he demonstrated towards the other items. Because of this, I have determined that they are nonpreferences and will not be used as positive reinforcements. Because neither of these items can be used as negative reinforcements either considering they cannot be forced upon him, neither of these items will be used for any reason throughout the course of the instructional program. Additionally, Summer Puckett shared that he has a great aversion to anything with a sticky or wet texture, so I will not include any items with these textures as part of the program. Since LZ is influenced by the way that people feel about him, another source of reinforcement could be natural human emotion that are slightly exaggerated to elicit his reaction. If someone shows him disappointment, he will be motivated to work and do well. Additionally, if he does something well, he can be rewarded by their positive emotional reaction. Finally, verbal praise is also a form of reinforcement for LZ and therefore will be used regularly throughout the course of the program.

Priority Communication Skills I believe that one of the priority communication skills to address with LZ is initiating communication with others. From observations that I conducted, I found that LZ rarely initiates verbal communication with others, something that is necessary in many different areas of his

life; including social interactions, expressing needs that he may have, or expressing wants. Without the skill of initiating verbal or other communication, many of LZs wants and needs may not be met. One example of this is when his cochlear implant was turned up much too loud. LZ did not make an attempt to communicate to anyone that there was a problem, instead this was figured out when someone saw that his eye was twitching. If LZ had initiated communication with someone in order to fix the dial, he would have gotten his needs met sooner than actually happened. Since LZs verbal communication is difficult to understand, he must use Proloquo2Go in order to initiate verbal communication with others. The other major priority communication skill for LZ is social communication. From observations that I conducted and direct interactions that I had with him, I found that he typically enjoys social encounters with peers or other individuals, but does not carry them out for very long. He relies on others to ask questions in social situations and responds typically with yeah or no, even when asked questions that are not yes/no. He is involved in social situations constantly throughout the day and the inability to effectively communicate to others creates an unfortunate barrier for him to have social interactions and even more so it makes it difficult to create and maintain friendships. To address these barriers, Proloquo2Go can be used to share different messages with others, including questions that he can ask in order to continue communication and responses to questions that he has been asked that span further than yeah and no. Using Proloquo2Go across more settings and more frequently will create opportunities for LZ to increase his social and expressive communication skills.

Reference Downing, J. (2005). Teaching communication skills to students with severe disabilities (2nd ed.). Baltimore, MD. Brookes Publishing Company.