Evaluation of language and communication skills in adult key word signing users with intellectual disability: Advantages of a narrative task

The evaluation of language and communication skills in adults who use augmentative and alternative communication (AAC) in general and key word signing (KWS) in particular, can be an elaborate task. Besides being time-consuming and not very similar to natural communication, standard language tests often do not take AAC or KWS into account. Therefore, we developed a narrative task specifically for adults with intellectual disability (ID) who use KWS. The task was evaluated in a group of 40 adult KWS users. Outcome measures on the narrative task correlated significantly with measures of standard language and communication tests for verbal language, but not for use of manual signs. All narrative measures, for both verbal language and manual signing, correlated highly with similar measures from a conversation sample. The developed narrative task proved useful and valid to evaluate the language and communication skills of adults with ID taking into account both their verbal language and manual sign use.