Browsing by Subject "avusteinen ilmaisu"

Objectives. Narrative means a way of report, understand and structure a lived experience. It is an important mean of self-expression and interaction and people use it to share information with each other. The ability to narrate appears when child becomes an active participant in fantasies, stories and actions related to himself. Children with speaking disabilities often use communication books or other equipment as an alternative or augmentative mean of communication. Their possibilities to narrate can be more limited than speaking children, due to several reasons. This study describes the characteristics of augmented narratives that are formed with communication books. This study also describes how the characteristics of narratives differ when the elicitation method is changed. Also the role of communication partner and communication aid is discussed. Methods. Study consists of two physically disabled 13 to 16-year old boys who used communication books as a alternative mean of their communication. The research material was gathered during the spring of 2014. The material consists of video recordings of examinees performing three kinds of narrative assignments. The video material was transcribed and analyzed quantitatively and qualitatively in the contexts set by the research questions. Results and conclusions. Macrostructure of the narratives produced by communication book varied. Most diverse narratives filled the characteristics of a perfect narrative whereas the most compact narratives mainly focused on describing individual events. The narratives were mainly short and use of grammatical function words was scarce. Expressions of cohesion was mainly scarce and monotonous as its best. Narratives of children communicating by AAC-means differ from ones of children developing normally and expressing themselves with speech especially on microstructures' behalf. These results support and complement previous research. Further research is important to achieve a sufficient perception of particularities of augmented narratives so that the communication aids can be developed to better support the language development and expressional needs of these children.