Communication interventions for individuals with severe disabilities: exploring research challenges and opportunities

What does the latest research tell us about communication interventions for people with severe disabilities? Find out in this authoritative research volume, which investigates the effectiveness of today's communication interventions, synthesizes evidence from current studies, and identifies urgent research directions for the future.

Shaped by a conference of The National Joint Committee on the Communication Needs of Persons with Severe Disabilities (NJC), this interdisciplinary book includes contributions from more than 30 top scholars from diverse fields, including psychology, special education, and speech language pathology. Each chapter gives readers a brief summary of research studies on a key intervention topic, insights on research design and measurement challenges, thoughts on future advances, and real-world clinical and educational recommendations. Essential for the reference libraries of educators and professionals, this book offers powerful insights about today's communication interventions-and sets a clear agenda for tomorrow's groundbreaking research

Topics Included:

• prelinguistic communication intervention for young children with intellectual disabilities
• challenging behavior and communicative alternatives
• interventions for children who are deafblind
• augmented language interventions for children with severe disabilities
• parents as partners in communication intervention
• the role of cultural, ethnic, and linguistic differences
• targeted and phenotypic communication interventions for children with Down syndrome or ASD
• issues related to research study design, including sample size, the effectiveness of randomized controlled trials, and integration of single-case and group designs
• assessment and measurement of communication and language skills in individuals with severe intellectual disabilities
• and more