Alternative Augmentative Communication Systems and Children with Autism: Literature Review

Abstract

Alternative and augmentative communication systems (AAC) could prove to be useful in helping children with autism who cannot properly express themselves or use their communication skills to establish communication. AAC is a system that either replaces or augments the existing communication skills of children with oral communication deficiencies. The purpose of this study is to present up-to-date information to autistic children of any age group on research papers using AAC methods and make resultbased suggestions with the aim of augmenting their communication skills. To serve this purpose, 30 articles published between the years 2010-2017 in international periodicals evaluating the effectiveness of AAC methods on different levels of communication performances of autistic people have been examined. The subject matter research papers were obtained during electronic screening conducted on the ERIC, Academic Search Complete and Google Scholar databases. The designated articles have been examined in terms of their basic descriptive qualities, procedural properties, purpose and conclusive results. In conclusion, AAC applications have been established as a method that could be effectively used in teaching communication skills of different levels to autistic children group. In this study, the findings revealed in the examined research papers have been interpreted, suggestions have been made to practitioners and future studies have been recommended.