Please pass along to colleagues and to people that use SGD’s.

A research team at Penn State (which includes a person with ALS) is interested in the experiences of persons with ALS who have received an AAC device.  You can find or more information at ALS and AAC project at Penn State  (or http://aac.psu.edu/?p=2885  ), or by emailing Felicia Giambalvo at psuAACresearch1@gmail.com  .  They will use the information they learn to improve AAC services for persons with ALS.

Basically we are asking people with ALS about the importance of factors that have been identified as "best practices" in ALS assessment/intervention for AAC ( Fried-Oken et al, attached) so that we can build evidence for getting these practices into pre-service training programs. We are asking people to talk about the impact of those "best practices" (e.g., including communication partners in assessment/training discussions, considering the use of multiple modes) on their experiences with the AAC assessment/intervention process.

We will not know where (or from whom) participants received services, just that they have ALS and received an SGD. We think the whole project will take about 2 hours of their time - they can complete the survey with a family member, and they can complete it in stages. We are able to pay a $60 honorarium to participants.  

Answers to the survey are done on line.  


ALS and AAC project at Penn State  or http://aac.psu.edu/?p=2885


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David McNaughton, Ph.D.
Professor, Special Education
227A CEDAR Building
The Pennsylvania State University
University Park, PA, 16802
phone:     (814) 865-7159
fax:    (814) 865-7066

For news on the RERC on AAC, please visit rerc-aac.org

For news on the special education program at Penn State, please go to http://www.ed.psu.edu/epcse/special-education/news

"We can, whenever and wherever we choose, successfully teach all children whose schooling is of interest to us. We already know more than  we need in order to do this. Whether we do it must finally depend on how we feel about the fact that we have not done it so far." (Edmonds, 1979)