# AACessTalk: Fostering Communication between Minimally Verbal Autistic Children and Parents with Contextual Guidance and Card Recommendation

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2409.09641 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2409.09641/

## Key facts

- Cited by 7 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 9 of its 143 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 15 Sep 2024.

## Builds on (most cited first, 9 of 9)

- [Prompting Large Language Model for Machine Translation: A Case Study](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2301.07069/) (2023)
- [Augmenting Language Models with Long-Term Memory](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2306.07174/) (2023)
- [Attention is All You Need in Speech Separation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2010.13154/) (2020)
- [Having Beer after Prayer? Measuring Cultural Bias in Large Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2305.14456/) (2023)
- [Keep Me Updated! Memory Management in Long-term Conversations](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2210.08750/) (2022)
- [MindfulDiary: Harnessing Large Language Model to Support Psychiatric Patients' Journaling](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2310.05231/) (2023)
- [ChaCha: Leveraging Large Language Models to Prompt Children to Share Their Emotions about Personal Events](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2309.12244/) (2023)
- [Captivate! Contextual Language Guidance for Parent-Child Interaction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2202.06806/) (2022)
- [Using Large Language Models to Accelerate Communication for Users with Severe Motor Impairments](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2312.01532/) (2023)

## Built on by (most cited first, 7 of 7)

- [Towards Aligning Multimodal LLMs with Human Experts: A Focus on Parent-Child Interaction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2511.04366/) (2025)
- [Human-AI Alignment of Multimodal Large Language Models with Speech-Language Pathologists in Parent-Child Interactions](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2506.05879/) (2025)
- [Autiverse: Eliciting Autistic Adolescents' Daily Narratives through AI-guided Multimodal Journaling](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2509.17466/) (2025)
- [AutiHero: Engaging Parents in Creating Personalized, Multi-path Social Narratives for Autistic Children](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2509.17608/) (2025)
- [QoNext: Towards Next-generation QoE for Foundation Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2509.21889/) (2025)
- [Exploring Implicit Perspectives on Autism in Large Language Models Through Multi-Agent Simulations](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2601.15437/) (2026)
- [Digital Harf: A Clinically Integrated Multimodal AI System for Pervasive Arabic Speech and Language Therapy](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2607.27212/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

As minimally verbal autistic (MVA) children communicate with parents through few words and nonverbal cues, parents often struggle to encourage their children to express subtle emotions and needs and to grasp their nuanced signals. We present AACessTalk, a tablet-based, AI-mediated communication system that facilitates meaningful exchanges between an MVA child and a parent. AACessTalk provides real-time guides to the parent to engage the child in conversation and, in turn, recommends contextual vocabulary cards to the child. Through a two-week deployment study with 11 MVA child-parent dyads, we examine how AACessTalk fosters everyday conversation practice and mutual engagement. Our findings show high engagement from all dyads, leading to increased frequency of conversation and turn-taking. AACessTalk also encouraged parents to explore their own interaction strategies and empowered the children to have more agency in communication. We discuss the implications of designing technologies for balanced communication dynamics in parent-MVA child interaction.