Narrative abilities have been linked to literacy, communicative competence and
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differences in their language learning opportunities and limitations of their AAC
systems. The structural dimensions of the narrative discourse produced by children
who use AAC have been observed to be poorly organized, limited in coherence and
severely impoverished in both vocabulary and grammar. In addition, the children
usually rely heavily on narrative co-construction and may not be given sufficient
opportunities by their communication partners to provide narrative features. This
study describes the process used to support the development of autonomous narrative
skills of an eight-year old child who uses a voice output communication aid (VOCA)
to communicate and who demonstrates significant delays in narrative formation.
Results indicate that narratives produced with her VOCA improved in both linguistic
and story complexity following intervention that targeted understanding and use of
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