Journal
JOURNAL OF SPEECH LANGUAGE AND HEARING RESEARCH
Volume 57, Issue 2, Pages 455-466Publisher
AMER SPEECH-LANGUAGE-HEARING ASSOC
DOI: 10.1044/2013_JSLHR-L-12-0159
Keywords
augmentative and alternative communication; children; developmental disorders; intervention
Funding
- National Institute of Child Health and Human Development [HD P01 25995]
- UMMS-Shriver Center [P30 HD 004147]
- Hintz Family Endowed Chair in Children's Communicative Competence
Ask authors/readers for more resources
Purpose: Many individuals with communication impairments use aided augmentative and alternative communication (AAC) systems involving letters, words, or line drawings that rely on the visual modality. It seems reasonable to suggest that display design should incorporate information about how users attend to and process visual information. The organization of AAC symbols can influence the speed and accuracy with which children select a target symbol on a display. This research examined why some displays facilitate responding. Method: Eye-tracking technology recorded point-of-gaze while children without disabilities engaged in a visual search task with 2 AAC displays. In 1 display, symbols sharing an internal color were clustered together. In the other display, like-colored symbols were distributed. Dependent measures were (a) latency to fixate on the target compared with distracters and (b) the number of fixations to target and distracters. Results: Participants were significantly slower to fixate on the target when like-colored symbols were distributed; there was a significant increase in the number of fixations to distracters that did not share color with the target. Conclusions: Efficient search was related to minimizing fixations to nonrelevant distracters. Vulnerability to distraction can be a significant problem in individuals with disabilities who use AAC. Minimizing the intrusion of such distraction may, therefore, be of importance in AAC display design.
Authors
I am an author on this paper
Click your name to claim this paper and add it to your profile.
Reviews
Recommended
No Data Available