Response time of children with complex communication needs following a communication opportunity

• In Event: Poster Session 08
  In Poster Session: PS 08 Topic - Language, Communication

Abstract

Introduction. Children with language impairments often need more time to process and respond when communicating with others (Millar et al., 2006). This is especially true for children with complex communication needs (CCN) who use augmentative and alternative communication (AAC). Providing wait time before a prompt allows children enough time to process and respond (Millar et al., 2006), and helps children to recognize their turn to communicate (Douglas & Gerde, 2019). However, a recent review (Sun et al., 2020) shows a lack of agreement on how long adults should wait when communicating with children who have CCN: while most studies employed 3-5s of wait time, some studies involved longer wait times, from 6s to 20s. Understanding patterns of child response time provides essential implications on how long communication partners should wait, which in turn supports child communication. The goal of this study is to examine the response time of children with CCN to a communication opportunity.

Research questions. (1) What is the pattern of how long children take to respond to a communication opportunity after the initial prompt? (2) Does the pattern of child response times differ by individuals and types of communication opportunity? (3) If the child does not respond to the initial communication opportunity, does providing another opportunity within 5s increase the likelihood of the child responding more quickly?

Method. Data from five preschool child-paraeducator dyads were analyzed from a larger study (Douglas et al., 2020) focused on training paraeducators to support children’s AAC use for communication. Children were diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder (N=4) and DiGeorge syndrome (N=1). Video data of child-paraeducator interactions were collected during 10-minute sessions across a 16-28 week period. Child-paraeducator communication turns were coded for: (1) type of communication opportunity (comment, question, choice, modeling); (2) occurrence of child communication turn; (3) time to subsequent communication by child or paraeducator. Survival analysis with Cox regression was used to examine child response time. A total of 6574 communication turns were analyzed, in which 40.90% of communication opportunities were not followed with a child communication and were considered right-censored communication opportunities.

Results. The median time to child communication was 1.91 seconds. A log-rank test indicated that individuals varied in response time (X2(4)=1336.95, p < .001). Child response time was related to type of communication opportunity (X2(2)=564.28, p < .001); pairwise comparisons indicated that children take a similar time to communicate following a choice (M=2.00s) or a question (M=7.05s), but both were significantly shorter than following a comment (M=14.50s). Modeling was associated with shorter response times (X2(1)=115.77, p < .001; Mmodel=4.55s; Mno model=12.31s). The number of communication opportunities without a child response before the current opportunity significantly predicted the child’s response time, X2(1)=520.79, p < .001, b=-.24, indicating that if the child does not respond to a communication opportunity, additional opportunities are associated with longer response times. The results suggest that instead of repeating communication opportunities, providing sufficient wait time and using questions and choices along with modeling increases the likelihood of child communication.

Authors

• Tiantian Sun, Michigan State University
  Presenting Author

• Ryan Bowles, Michigan State University
  Non-Presenting Author

• Sarah N. Douglas, Michigan State University
  Non-Presenting Author

• Joshua B. Plavnick, Michigan State University
  Non-Presenting Author