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Malaysian speech-language pathology students' reflections about their participation in an AAC training program

Joginder Singh S, Suhumaran LV, Skulski K, Ahmad Rusli Y

Augment Altern Commun, 2022 Dec;38(4):236-244.
PMID: 36573041 DOI: 10.1080/07434618.2022.2141135

Most speech-language pathologists (SLPs) in Malaysia practice with an undergraduate degree, which provides them with limited knowledge about and training in augmentative and alternative communication (AAC). This limited knowledge and training may affect their confidence and competence when introducing and using AAC with individuals for whom it is required. This study aimed to obtain feedback, via semi-structured interviews, from a group of 11 Malaysian university students who participated in an AAC training program about their experiences participating in and the effectiveness of the training program. Three themes were derived from qualitative content analysis of the interviews: (a)Time Demands, (b) Generalizing the use of AAC, and (c) Learning Required When Introducing AAC. The participants reported that they obtained better insights into the role of SLPs and communication partners with regards to AAC, as well as the struggles they faced. Students also reported increased confidence when working with individuals who use AAC after participating in the training program, thus supporting the need for similar training programs in the future.

Matched MeSH terms: Communication Aids for Disabled*
Parents' perception on the use of augmentative and alternative communication by children with complex communication needs in Malaysia

Joginder Singh S, Mohd Ayob N, Hassan FH

Disabil Rehabil Assist Technol, 2023 Jan;18(1):118-126.
PMID: 36344474 DOI: 10.1080/17483107.2022.2140850

PURPOSE: Children with developmental disabilities who have complex communication needs (CCN) frequently need to use augmentative and alternative communication (AAC) to communicate effectively and efficiently. Speech-language pathologists (SLPs) often work closely with parents and other professionals when deciding on the best AAC system to introduce to these children. This study aimed to describe the use of AAC by children with CCN in Malaysia as reported by their parents.
MATERIALS AND METHOD: An online survey distributed for this study was completed by 235 parents.
RESULTS: Most of the parents of children with CCN who participated in this study reported that their children used low-tech AAC systems. A majority of respondents were satisfied with their child's AAC system. Parental satisfaction was positively associated with the frequency of use and whether the use of AAC helped parents understand the child better. Challenges reported by parents when using AAC and the reason some families abandoned the use of AAC were similar. Examples of challenges include parents having limited time and the child lacking the motivation to use the AAC system.
CONCLUSION: The findings of this study suggest the importance of SLPs actively involving parents in the selection of their children's AAC system so they are agreeable with the system introduced and continuously supporting children and their families to encourage and sustain the use of AAC. Implications for rehabilitationSpeech-language pathologists (SLPs) can create communication opportunities for the child to use augmentative and alternative communication (AAC) and experience success, teach parents how to incorporate AAC into the family's daily routine and activities, and reduce the demands on parents by preparing the AAC materials and programming the AAC system where possible.SLPs can provide ongoing support to school teachers to equip them with the necessary knowledge and skills to support the use of AAC in the classroom.

Matched MeSH terms: Communication Aids for Disabled*
The use of augmentative and alternative communication by children with developmental disability in the classroom: a case study

Joginder Singh S, Loo ZL

Disabil Rehabil Assist Technol, 2023 Nov;18(8):1281-1289.
PMID: 37017363 DOI: 10.1080/17483107.2023.2196305

PURPOSE: Augmentative and alternative communication (AAC) systems are often introduced to children with disabilities who demonstrate complex communication needs. As attending school is an essential part of these children's lives, it is important that they use their AAC system to communicate in the classroom. This study aimed to describe the nature of the use of AAC by students with developmental disabilities in the classroom.
MATERIALS AND METHOD: This study was conducted in Malaysia. Six students were observed twice each in their classroom and their classroom interactions were video recorded. The video recordings were transcribed and coded for the presence of a communication event, the student's mode of communication and communication function, the communication partner involved, and access to the AAC system.
RESULTS: Contrary to past studies, most students in this study spontaneously initiated interaction almost as many times as they responded. They primarily communicated with gestures and verbalizations/vocalizations despite having been introduced to an AAC system. When students communicated using their AAC system, they mainly interacted with the teachers, and for the function of either behavioral regulation or joint attention. It was found that for 39% of communicative events, the student's aided AAC system was not within arm's reach.
CONCLUSION: The findings highlight the need for efforts to encourage students with complex communication needs to use AAC more frequently in their classroom to be able to communicate more effectively and for a wider range of communicative functions. Speech-language pathologists can work closely with teachers to provide the necessary support to these students.

Matched MeSH terms: Communication Aids for Disabled*
Malaysian teachers' experience using augmentative and alternative communication with students

Joginder Singh S, Diong ZZ, Mustaffa Kamal R

Augment Altern Commun, 2020 06;36(2):107-117.
PMID: 32706287 DOI: 10.1080/07434618.2020.1785547

Teachers play an important role in the successful implementation of augmentative and alternative communication (AAC) for students with complex communication needs. The goal of this two-phase, mixed-methods study was to explore Malaysian teachers' use of, experience with, and perceptions about AAC. Phase 1 involved 252 teachers who completed a questionnaire that was aimed at collecting nationwide data about their use and overall perceptions of AAC. Phase 2 involved semi-structured interviews with 13 teachers who had experience supporting students who used AAC. Approximately half of the participants who completed the questionnaire knew about AAC and had used AAC with their students. Almost all of the participants had positive views of AAC though some misconceptions were reported. Most participants had limited knowledge about AAC that led them to experience difficulties supporting their students. Teachers were motivated to receive AAC-related training to enable them to use AAC more successfully with their students given the small number of SLPs in the country.

Matched MeSH terms: Communication Aids for Disabled*
Reflections of Malaysian parents of children with developmental disabilities on their experiences with AAC

Joginder Singh S, Hussein NH, Mustaffa Kamal R, Hassan FH

Augment Altern Commun, 2017 Jun;33(2):110-120.
PMID: 28387140 DOI: 10.1080/07434618.2017.1309457

Parents play an important role in the successful implementation of AAC. Previous research has indicated that parents in different countries have varying perceptions about the use of AAC and face different challenges in its implementation. To date, there is limited information about the use of AAC by children in Malaysia or parents' views about its use. The aim of this study was to explore Malaysian parents' perception of AAC and their experience when supporting their children who use AAC. For this study, 12 parents of children with autism spectrum disorder and cerebral palsy were involved in semi-structured individual interviews. Qualitative content analysis was used to analyze interview data. Following analysis, three themes were identified: (a) impact of the use of AAC, (b) challenges faced, and (c) hopes and expectations. Participants reported that the use of AAC had a positive impact on their children, but that they faced challenges related to the child, the settings, and the system itself, as well as a lack of time and support. Findings from this study provide an insight for Malaysian speech therapists about the challenges faced by parents when supporting their children who use AAC, and how important it is to overcome these challenges to ensure successful implementation of AAC.

Matched MeSH terms: Communication Aids for Disabled*
A new brain-computer interface design using fuzzy ARTMAP

Palaniappan R, Paramesran R, Nishida S, Saiwaki N

IEEE Trans Neural Syst Rehabil Eng, 2002 Sep;10(3):140-8.
PMID: 12503778

This paper proposes a new brain-computer interface (BCI) design using fuzzy ARTMAP (FA) neural network, as well as an application of the design. The objective of this BCI-FA design is to classify the best three of the five available mental tasks for each subject using power spectral density (PSD) values of electroencephalogram (EEG) signals. These PSD values are extracted using the Wiener-Khinchine and autoregressive methods. Ten experiments employing different triplets of mental tasks are studied for each subject. The findings show that the average BCI-FA outputs for four subjects gave less than 6% of error using the best triplets of mental tasks identified from the classification performances of FA. This implies that the BCI-FA can be successfully used with a tri-state switching device. As an application, a proposed tri-state Morse code scheme could be utilized to translate the outputs of this BCI-FA design into English letters. In this scheme, the three BCI-FA outputs correspond to a dot and a dash, which are the two basic Morse code alphabets and a space to denote the end (or beginning) of a dot or a dash. The construction of English letters using this tri-state Morse code scheme is determined only by the sequence of mental tasks and is independent of the time duration of each mental task. This is especially useful for constructing letters that are represented as multiple dots or dashes. This combination of BCI-FA design and the tri-state Morse code scheme could be developed as a communication system for paralyzed patients.

Matched MeSH terms: Communication Aids for Disabled*
Emotional speech acoustic model for Malay: iterative versus isolated unit training

Mustafa MB, Ainon RN

J Acoust Soc Am, 2013 Oct;134(4):3057-66.
PMID: 24116440 DOI: 10.1121/1.4818741

The ability of speech synthesis system to synthesize emotional speech enhances the user's experience when using this kind of system and its related applications. However, the development of an emotional speech synthesis system is a daunting task in view of the complexity of human emotional speech. The more recent state-of-the-art speech synthesis systems, such as the one based on hidden Markov models, can synthesize emotional speech with acceptable naturalness with the use of a good emotional speech acoustic model. However, building an emotional speech acoustic model requires adequate resources including segment-phonetic labels of emotional speech, which is a problem for many under-resourced languages, including Malay. This research shows how it is possible to build an emotional speech acoustic model for Malay with minimal resources. To achieve this objective, two forms of initialization methods were considered: iterative training using the deterministic annealing expectation maximization algorithm and the isolated unit training. The seed model for the automatic segmentation is a neutral speech acoustic model, which was transformed to target emotion using two transformation techniques: model adaptation and context-dependent boundary refinement. Two forms of evaluation have been performed: an objective evaluation measuring the prosody error and a listening evaluation to measure the naturalness of the synthesized emotional speech.

Matched MeSH terms: Communication Aids for Disabled*
Assisting the visually impaired to deal with telephone interview jobs using information and commutation technology

Yeh FH, Yang CC

Res Dev Disabil, 2014 Dec;35(12):3462-8.
PMID: 25209925 DOI: 10.1016/j.ridd.2014.08.009

This study proposed a new information and commutation technology assisted blind telephone interview (ICT-ABTI) system to help visually impaired people to do telephone interview jobs as normal sighted people and create more diverse employment opportunities for them. The study also used an ABAB design to assess the system with seven visually impaired people. As the results, they can accomplish 3070 effective telephone interviews per month independently. The results also show that working performance of the visually impaired can be improved effectively with appropriate design of operation working flow and accessible software. The visually impaired become productive, lucrative, and self-sufficient by using ICT-ABTI system to do telephone interview jobs. The results were also shared through the APEC Digital Opportunity Center platform to help visually impaired in Philippines, Malaysia and China.

Matched MeSH terms: Communication Aids for Disabled