A knowledge of conversational topics and the importance of typical collocations or phrases may assist the augmented communicator to select an individualized vocabulary useful for conducting conversations, thus helping him or her join in and sustain social interactions more easily. The field of augmentative communication is questioning how best to collect vocabulary for consideration by the augmented communicator. It is now widely believed that it is important to consider a variety of sources and to guarantee that any vocabulary selected is socially valid. This knowledge indicates the importance of providing people who rely on augmentative communication with random access both to core and fringe vocabularies to guarantee the capacity to engage in a wide variety of conversational situations. Random access here is opposed to hierarchical access.
Hierarchical access means navigating through various pages to find a particular core or fringe word.
Random access implies a coded, simultaneously available seemless vocabulary organization on a single screen or overlay. Language samples obtained from three year olds engaged in a conversation with their parent or an examiner indicated children readily acknowledged topics of conversation introduced by adults. Initial review of the uptake vocabulary suggests strong use of a core vocabulary in order to comply with the initiated topic. I will make you something. I'm going to make you this.