- Lic. María Florencia Mosquera
- Lic. Laura Rossana Sosa
- Lic. Marcela Alejandra Musso (directora)
- Lic. María del Valle Abraham (directora)
Within the ICRA line of work, we believe that when a patient achieves the 7 basic speech acts assessed with the ICRA-A Battery, they access the Minimum Communication Circuit, since the illocutionary, locutionary, and perlocutionary strengths of each individual provide significant communicative potential that goes beyond an isolated verbal utterance.
Having a Minimum Communication Circuit, means that the child can use the 7 basic speech acts (rejecting, calling, giving and requesting information, making assertions, and requesting actions and objects), with all their pragmatic features (paralinguistic, linguistic, and coherent), whenever the communicative situation demands it. This is followed by the stage of linguistic consolidation and expansion. The therapeutic approach will move from preverbal to verbal, always following a progression criterion.
For patients with a severe profile who are unable to access the Minimum Communication Circuit, or who make limited progress after a period of treatment, it is beneficial to add visual aids.
The same therapeutic guidelines proposed by the ICRA Method will be applied, supported by specific, ad hoc pictograms that visually represent the constitutive features of each of the 7 basic speech acts.
The alternative basic speech act is when the locutionary force cannot be achieved (temporarily or definitively) and the use of a pictogram representing that speech act is necessary.
They will be implemented following the progression criteria already detailed.
The constitutive and distinctive pragmatic features (prelinguistic, paralinguistic, linguistic, and coherence) were taken into account when designing the pictograms for each basic speech act.
A "professional kit" was developed, consisting of a total of 38 pictograms.
More than one pictogram was designed for each speech act. The female/male gender factor was taken into account. For those speech acts that we found to be more complex to represent and identify, more than one design was created.
The following characteristics were taken into account: magnetic, 10 cm x 10 cm in size (to facilitate better visualization of features and manipulation of the material). Pastel colors were chosen.
A "home kit" was created so that patients could use them in everyday contexts, outside of speech therapy clinical care. It consists of 11 pictograms.