Can Shaping Use AAC or a Client-Chosen Response?

Define the AAC skill being shaped

Name the natural opportunity, current response, terminal response, changing dimension, acceptable response forms, partner outcome, and access conditions. The gradual-change review helps separate a changing response criterion from stimulus or schedule changes. Device navigation, message construction, and the communicative act are different targets.

Protect authorship and meaning

A partner can model on a separate device or in another agreed way. Physical selection on the person's system can make authorship unclear. Record modeled, prompted, and independently authored responses separately. Honor no, stop, pain, help, break, and different even when they fall outside the teaching target.

Use communication guidance directly

The ASHA AAC portal describes aided and unaided AAC, partner support, and continual access to tools or devices. The Ethics Code addresses competence, collaboration, consent and assent when applicable, client involvement, and risk. Neither permits a generic shaping sequence for every communicator.

Keep reinforcement proportional

Reinforcement can follow the current approximation without making basic communication outcomes conditional on a more complex form. If the person says the equivalent message with another reliable form, respond to the communication and score the planned skill accurately.

A practical example

Luis chooses a goal of finding the different message on a personal device without partner navigation. The first criterion is opening the correct folder; the partner then pauses while Luis selects the authored message. Device access and a paper backup remain available, and the requested change is honored at every step.

Questions families can use

What response is being shaped? Who authors it? Which messages are honored immediately? Where does a partner model? Which access method and backup remain? Which communication specialist is involved?