Literacy Learning in Users of AAC: A Neurocognitive Perspective

Abstract

The understanding of written or printed text or discourse – depicted either in orthographical, graphic-visual or tactile symbols – calls upon both bottom-up word recognition processes and top-down comprehension processes. Different architectures have been proposed to account for literacy processes. Research has shown that the first steps in perceiving, processing and deriving conceptual meaning from words, graphic symbols, manual signs, and co-speech gestures or tactile manual signing and tangible symbols can be seen as identical and collectively (sub)activated. Results from recent brain research and neurolinguistics have revealed new insights in the reading process of typical and atypical readers and may provide verifiable evidence for improved literacy assessment and the validation of early intervention programs for AAC users.

Keywords:

• Word recognition
• Literacy
• Augmentative and alternative communication
• Neurocognitive processes