Words needed for sharing a story: Implications for vocabulary selection in augmentative and alternative communication

BACKGROUND: This study examined the narrative vocabulary of typically developing children for the purpose of guiding vocabulary selection for children with complex communication needs. METHOD: Eight children in their first year of schooling (aged 5 years 0 months to 5 years 8 months) and 10 children in their second year of schooling (aged 6 years 0 months to 7 years 2 months) generated story retell, personal, and script narratives. These were analysed using the Child Language Analysis (MacWhinney, 2008 ) program. RESULTS: Several words occurred with high frequency across all tasks. Other words were more specific to particular tasks and topics. In the story-retelling task, the majority of the unique words used were from the original story. However, of the total words available in the original story, only a small proportion was used. CONCLUSIONS: Some of the high frequency words overlapped with those included in existing wordlists. However, other words were unique to this study. The wordlists generated will provide a useful resource that can be used alongside existing wordlists to guide decision making around vocabulary selection for children with complex communication needs.