Partner Assisted Scanning

Partner Assisted Scanning allows a communication partner to verbally speak topic choices to the student. The student then indicates via an access switch, head nod, facial expression, vocalization, etc... that this is what they want to talk about. Additional choices are then given to the student to help them indicate their message in a target topic. This can vary among a continuum of complexity and is student/situation dependent how complex the system will be.

Watch this Video below by Cincinnati Children's Hospital to get an overview of this communication system.

You will work with your Speech-language Pathologist and possibly your occupational therapist to develop target vocabulary as well as an access method for responding. (Reminder - the term ACCESS METHOD refers to the response modality that is most easily used by the student at this time.) This could be eye gaze, facial expression, limb movement, sounds, switch access, etc... The response mode is variable and 100% designed around ease of access for the student. If the team has determined that this type of communication system is warranted, we can assume that gross and fine motor control are a significant challenge. Once vocabulary and access have been selected, it's time to start practicing.

Please note, no student using any communication system will be able to pick it up and use it independently. If a student needs to learn a language system, initial targets need to be modeled frequently and should be reinforcing in nature.

Things to avoid...

Using Partner Assisted Scanning to "test" a student while they are just learning how to communicate. Communication should be A fun and positive experience for everyone! If it's fun and rewarding, the student will want to use the system again in the future :)

Never using the student's system to talk. We the COMMUNICATION PARTNERS should use the student's (or a duplicate system if available) to talk. Think of AAC like a foreign language. If no one spoke to a novice learner in Spanish, they would never learn to become fluent. The same is true for AAC. Without modeling how do we expect our student's to learn to use this new foreign language?

"In this video, Jack and Mary-Louise show us how they use a combination of visual and auditory scanning. Mary-Louise points to choices in his PODD book and says the message aloud so Jack can consider his options. Jack does his part by signaling when he sees/hears a desired message. Because his body is terribly uncooperative, he signals in a few different ways (i.e., ‘Yes’ with vocalization, eyebrow raises, head nods, &/or eye gaze, and ‘No’ with a quiet pause or by turning his head away). Take a look at this experienced team work through a message."

Your student is counting on you to help them access their world. Partner Assisted Scanning is just one great way we can support our students to have control and be heard!! You, the staff and parents, are so amazingly important to any students' success. Thank you for learning more in order to best support our AWESOME students!!