INITIATION AND REPAIR OF INTENTIONAL COMMUNICATION ACTS BY ADULTS WITH SEVERE TO PROFOUND COGNITIVE DISABILITIES

This study assessed the communication initiation and repair behaviors of 28 individuals with severe to profound mental retardation in a vari ety of experimental conditions. All of these individuals communicated through nonsymbolic gestures. The experimental procedures were devised to simulate the conditions that typically evoke two different types o f initiations: comments and requests. Each subject initiation was foll owed by an experimenter response that indicated a communication breakd own to determine if and how these subjects would attempt to repair suc h breakdowns. Different indicators of communication breakdown were sys tematically varied in these scripted interactions, including explicit requests for repair (verbal and gestural) and Implicit requests for re pair (failure to respond or inappropriate response to the subject's co mmunication act). All subjects initiated at least one communication ac t, and all but three subjects repaired at least one communication act following a breakdown. Significantly more subjects initiated protoimpe rative than protodeclarative communication acts, despite equal opportu nities for both types of acts. Across all conditions, additions were o bserved to occur significantly less often than recasts or repetitions. There were no significant differences in the number of subjects repai ring communication following the different types of communication brea kdown.