RERC on AAC
The RERC on AAC is a collaborative center committed to advancing knowledge and producing innovative engineering solutions in augmentative and alternative communication (AAC). The RERC on AAC will support a research and development program that addresses three areas of rehabilitation science and engineering:
- Improving access to technologies through exploration of innovative approaches and through integration of multi-modalities;
- Developing innovative language support technologies, including natural language processing and computer-mediation, to support effective communication for children and adults with limited access to language;
- Improving the human computer interface to reduce cognitive visual processing demands and enhance communication performance.
We also will support a range of training and dissemination activities. Our goal is that the AAC technologies and knowledge generated by the RERC on AAC will enable individuals with complex communication needs to achieve the basic human right of communication, and to maximize their participation in education, employment, health and community activities.
Using digital texts in interactive reading activities (Boyle et al, 2017)
Boyle et al describe the results of a pilot study intervention using digital texts including VSDs and T2L features with children with language delays in an inclusive preschool setting.
Improving literacy outcomes for individuals with ASD and limited speech
This webcast summarizes the positive results observed for research-based literacy interventions with individuals with ASD
2018 Student Research & Design Competition: Access and AAC
The RERC on AAC is pleased to announce the 2018 Student Research and Design Competition
Family-centered services for children with ASD and limited speech: The experiences of parents and speech-language pathologists (Mandak & Light, 2017)
99 parents of children with ASD and limited speech and 211 SLPs who served children with ASD and limited speech completed questionnaires measuring their experiences with the provision of family-centered services.
Students from Northeastern University win 2017 RERC on AAC Award
Fernando Quivira and Matt Higger (Northeastern University) won the 2017 RERC on AAC Student Research and Design Competition
AAC intervention to build communication, language, and literacy skills with children with complex communication needs… (Light, 2016)
What advances have been made to date in AAC interventions for children? And what are the challenges that we need to address to improve outcomes?
Precision intervention research for adults with complex communication needs resulting from acquired medical conditions (Beukelman, 2016).
“In this article, I will briefly discuss the population base of adults with acquired complex communication needs…”
Fast switch scanning keyboards: Minimal expected query decision trees (Higger et al, 2016)
Within AAC, switch scanning is a common paradigm for spelling where a set of characters is highlighted and the user is queried as to whether their target character is in the highlighted set. This work seeks a decision tree which requires the fewest expected queries per decision sequence (EQPD).
A kronecker product structured EEG covariance estimator for a language model assisted-BCI (Gonzalez-Navarro & Moghadamfalahi, 2016)
in this manuscript we propose a Kronecker product structure for covariance matrices
Spatio-temporal EEG models for brain interfaces (Gonzalez-Navarro et al, 2017)
In this paper we propose a structure for the covariance matrices of the multichannel EEG signals.