Assessing Communication Skills With People Who Are Deaf and Lower Functioning

1. Assessing Communication Skills With People Who Are Deaf and Lower Functioning Greg Long, Ph.D. School of Allied Health and Communicative Disorders Northern Illinois University DeKalb, IL 60115 glong@niu.edu

2. Overview • Purpose-driven assessment • Functional communication assessment • Rationale • Description • Application

3. Meet David Long, my brother

4. Why conduct the assessment? • Diagnosis/classification • Intervention

5. Traditional diagnostic approaches • Determine presence or absence of a disorder • Confirm assessments and diagnoses • Provide prognostic information

6. Limitations to diagnostic approaches • Heavy emphasis on standardization and norm groups • Clinic-based administration • Limited sample of behavior assessed • Generalization questionable

7. Evaluator issues • Background knowledge of deafness, language development, and disability • Skills, especially sign language • Reliability between assessors

8. Assessing to intervene • Target functional skills • Focus on age-appropriate skills • Congruence between individuals and environments

9. Rationale for functional assessment • Communication environments vary • Mode is less important than success • Logical progression from evaluation to intervention

10. Four-Step Approach • Develop a communication profile • Describe the communicative environment • Determine discrepancies • Plan interventions

11. Developing a Communication Profile • Develop composite picture of the individual’s background, abilities, and interests related to communication

12. Data collection strategies • Case review • Interviews • Observations • Collaboration

13. Background Info • Hearing loss • Health and secondary disability info • Current and prior living situation • Educational background • Employment history

14. Preferences? • Speech/speech reading • Sign • Fingerspelling • Gestures and pantomime • Drawing and showing pictures • Reading/writing • Communication devices

15. How does the individual… • Greet others • Get people’s attention • Express likes and dislikes • Ask questions • Express displeasure, frustration, and/or anger

16. Additional communication questions • Types of spontaneous communication? • Use turn-taking? • Communication attempts with… • Deaf people • Hearing people

17. Specific communication skills and abilities • Gestural and pantomimed communication • Ability to be understood? • Use and recognize facial expressions? • Manual communication • Use? • Type of sign?

18. Receptive signing • How well does the individual understand… • ASL signs? • English-based signs? • Instructions? • Yes/no questions? • Simple conversation? • Directions?

19. Expressive signing • How well does the individual… • Use fingerspelling? • Produce clear and understandable signs? • Express ideas clearly? • Ask yes/no questions? • Participate in simple conversations?

20. Speech skills • Use? • Frequency? • With whom? • Intelligibility? • Familiar persons • Unfamiliar persons

21. Writing skills • Use? • Survival writing skills? • Name • Address • Legibility

24. Reading skills • Use? • Types of information read? • Survival reading skills?

25. Interpreters • Prior experience? • Knowledge of • Role and duties • When to use • How to obtain • Payment

26. Assistive technology • Experience and/or possibility of benefit • Ability to maintain • Any devices needed but not possessed? • Why? • Skills and familiarity with assorted devices

27. Describe the Communicative Environment • Determine the nature, type, amount, and importance of communication at a specific site

28. Data collection strategies • Interviews with parents, teachers, professional staff, and/or employer(s) • Observation

29. Observe communicative exchanges • What was communicated? (topic) • How was it communicated? (modality) • Was the exchange successful? • Who did most of the work to ensure understanding?

30. Process • First, describe the environment in terms of physical barriers and supports • Second, identify specific communication tasks needed for success

31. Barriers and supports • Lighting • Noise • Visual distractions • Accessible technology (e.g., captioning) • Prior experience and knowledge

32. Identify communicative tasks • What kinds of communication skills are needed in this setting? • Most frequently needed? • How critical are they? • Any required infrequently?

33. Prioritize communication tasks • Obtain communication-related input from others at the job site • Prioritize which communication skills are most important

34. Determine Discrepancies • Most important communication skills? • “Fit” between individual’s communication profile and environmental requirements? • Identify mismatch(es) between needed skills and abilities.

35. Which skills are most important? • Using the list of communication skills generated by the site analysis determine: • Importance of the skills • Whether it is possessed • If so, in what modality

36. Identify discrepancies • Communication skills described as important but not possessed.

37. Prioritize discrepancies • List all communication discrepancies • Which skills are most important?

38. Plan Interventions • Identify potential accommodations, interventions, and natural supports designed to reduce communication discrepancies

39. Individual considerations • Consider individual’s learning style • What instructional strategies seem to work best? • Any strategies to be avoided? • Any significant barriers to learning?

40. Setting considerations • Any characteristics of the environment that would tend to encourage or discourage the adoption of specific intervention strategies? • Attitude toward accommodations?

41. Accommodations • Should be: • chosen with the individual’s assistance • designed to promote individuality, independence, and autonomy • as inconspicuous as possible yet still effective

42. Potential accommodations • Technology based • Visual or vibrating alerting devices • FM systems • Telephone amplifier • Smart phones/Text messaging • Closed captioning • Online assessment tool

43. Low tech • Picture books • PECS • Color coding • Drawings • Teacher notes • Maximize visual orientation to environment

44. Special services • Interpreters • Note takers • Itinerant teachers • Tutors

45. Natural supports • Sign language classes • Disability awareness education • Encourage creativity and use of gestures and pantomime • Participate in co-curricular activities

46. Summary • Understand the individual’s communication skills • Assess communication demands of the environment • Compare the individual’s skills against site demands • Intervene to create a best fit between the individual and environment

47. Application • How might a functional communication assessment be used with a(n) • child in elementary school (Grades 1-5) • adolescent in middle school (Grades 6-9) • young adult considering vocational and employment options (Grades 10 and beyond)

48. Elementary school

49. Junior high school

50. Background Info • Profound bilateral hearing loss • Borderline intelligence, mild CP • Lives with family • Attended a day program, oral only