Motor Planning, Language Organization and Real Estate While we did not want Douglas to rely on automaticity of mo- tor patterns in order to navigate through his device; it was very important that he had access to consistent motor patterns, so he could develop motor automaticity. This was accomplished by the way icon symbols were sorted. Starting with the first row on the main and sequence pages, these are always where fringe vocabulary or quick words live (see Figures 1 and 2). As with other MinSpeak® programs, this is where the language system became highly customizable to Douglas and his experience with vocabulary. An important question that may be forming is: why would you put fringe vocabulary (the least used vocabulary when implementing a core language system) in the row with the least amount of hits to access? There are a few reasons. To start, activity rows (a concept of MinSpeak® systems) were part of the program that we customized off of and lived in the first row. The activity rows lend themselves well to fringe vo- cabulary; and in a system made for a direct selection there is not a motor consideration for a first row versus a second row. However, we did not leave this here simply because that is what we had to work with; it lent itself well to natural motor planning. Due to the location of the activity rows, we were able to provide natural and quick access to “quick words” on the main screen. Also, the way the scan pattern is programmed in PRC devices, it would take a
The main screen was sorted as similarly as we could with some secondary context conventions. Yellow remained the people row. Green became icon pictures and names of things we generally do or use inside. Blue became icon pictures and names of things we generally do or use outside. Orange became icon pictures and names of things we do with our body. By having similar naming conventions on the main screen as the second sequence screen, Douglas was able to create motor plans by understanding that the row colors always stayed consistent. Additionally this informa- tion was reinforced in low-tech ways of using his picture symbols, talking about words as being a “yellow word”, or “green word”, and so on. An additional piece of information was the prompt names of the icon symbols bridging to the sequence screen. They generally described the icon symbol chosen. For example, the picture of a toy box and toys was “play”. We worked with Douglas on creating mental images of each auditory prompt using the visual informa- tion we (and Douglas at times was) were able to gather from the icon. Because we customized his system based off of MinSpeak® symbols, it was important for Douglas to learn the concept of multi-meaning symbols in order to navigate through his language system and make informed guesses on where vocabulary lived, that he hadn’t used or learned the location. So, while still taking advantage of motor planning, Douglas did not have to rely solely on motor patterns to navigate through his language system.
Figure 2. Sequence Screen of “your hand”
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