"No shoes; they walked away?": effects of enhancements on learning and using Blissymbols by normal 3-year-old children.

The present investigation studied the effects of enhancements on the learning, retention, transfer to the unlearned form, and use of Blissymbols in 40 normal 3-year-old children. The subjects, seen individually, learned either 12 standard Blissymbols (SBS) or the same 12 symbols in the enhanced form (EBS). The symbols were introduced with short explanations. The number of trials taken to reach > 90% correct identification, the number of symbols selected appropriately to complete a communicative act, the number of symbols correctly identified a week after the acquisition phase was completed, and the number of symbols correctly identified in the untrained form of Blissymbols were determined. The results demonstrated that the subjects learned EBS faster than SBS, remembered more EBS than SBS in the retention task, did not differ in the communicative use of SBS and EBS, and were affected more negatively when presented with SBS than EBS in a task where the untrained form was presented. The results are discussed in terms of how very young children might benefit more from an illustration system such as EBS than from an orthographic system such as SBS.

Key word signing: perceived and acoustic differences between signed and spoken narratives.

Key-word-sign (KWS) and speech-only programs differ in the results they achieve with nonspeaking individuals. This difference might be traced to suprasegmental aspects of speech. In an earlier study, Windsor and Fristoe (1989) showed that untrained listeners could distinguish speech produced using KWS from speech only. In the present study, acoustic measures as well as listener judgments of KWS and spoken-only (S-O) narratives were obtained. Compared to S-O narratives, KWS narratives were produced with a slower articulation rate, due to increased pause and speech segment duration and increased pause number. Within-sentence pauses in KWS narratives tended to occur immediately after a signed word.

"A spinach with a V on it": what 3-year-olds see in standard and enhanced Blissymbols.

To aid young children in learning and using Blissymbols, the characters are often enhanced by the drawing of additional components. Thirty standard or 30 enhanced Blissymbols, designed to represent familiar actions (10), attributes (10), and objects/entities (10), were shown to 20 normal 3-year-old children, who were asked to guess what they mean. Their responses were examined to learn what children perceive when they see such symbols. They mainly identified perceptual features and related elements of symbols to something with which they were familiar. The number of their guesses that referred to the embellishments of the enhanced Blissymbols was twice as great as the number that referred to the standard Blissymbol base. The results are discussed in terms of the role of enhancements and possible applications to symbol introduction, as well as an early glimpse at emerging literacy.

Key word signing: listeners' classification of signed and spoken narratives.

Suprasegmental changes in speaker-signers' speech may be an important component of the results obtained in key-word-sign programs. The aim of this study was to investigate whether untrained listeners could tell a difference between the speech of a person using key word signing with speech and using speech only. Fifty untrained listeners heard an audiotape of six speaker-signers who sometimes used key word signing and sometimes used speech only in their production of 24 spoken narratives. The results demonstrated that listeners could accurately classify all keyword-signed communication of three speaker-signers and the spoken-only communication of all four speaker-signers who had been previously identified as demonstrating natural spoken communication. The major perceived differences between the use of key-word-signed communication and spoken-only communication were differences in speech rate and word emphasis and differences in pausing.

Learning of Blissymbols and manual signs.

Blissymbols and manual signs are two representational systems widely used as alternatives to spoken communication for persons unable to speak understandably. They were compared to determine if there is any advantage of one over the other in ease of learning or in retention. Immediate and 1-day posttest measures were obtained from 20 7- and 8-year-old children engaged in a paired-associate transfer-of-training task using manual signs and Blissymbols. Results showed no overall difference between signs and symbols in number of correct responses on either the immediate or 1-day posttest.

The effects of presentation modality upon learning in a comprehension task using oral, manual, and dual mode stimulus cues.

Interest in how and why the use of nonspeech symbols such as manual signs facilitates the communication development of language-handicapped individuals has been growing. One question of interest is whether comprehension is facilitated because manual sign cues are in the same stimulus modality (visual) as the objects or events to which they refer, in contrast to oral cues, which are in a different modality (auditory). Another question is, when total communication (words and manual signs) is used, which modality, visual or auditory, actually controls responding? Previous analogue research with normal adults has not controlled for representational iconicity and/or has utilized tasks different than those used with handicapped populations. In this study, 15 undergraduate students were trained to a criterion to identify abstract forms in response to manual sign, CVC nonsense syllables, or combined manual sign plus CVC nonsense syllables. Signed English signs normally representing common objects were matched to the abstract forms. Results from learning probes indicated that performance improved significantly following training for all types of labels. Performance on learning probes of responses to manual labels was significantly poorer than performance on probes of responses to oral labels, to manual labels previously used in combined labels, and to oral labels previously used in combined labels. However, there was no difference in performance among these latter three conditions. These results suggest that the facilitative effects of manual sign labels upon comprehension found in other research may be due to the iconic relationship between signs and their referents.

Amer-Ind transparency.

Objective and reliable transparency comprehension results have been obtained on the citation form of the 193 Amer-Ind signals as presented in the original Amerind Video Dictionary. Transparency ratings, as determined by three different scoring criteria, as well as the most common errors, are presented. While transparency (42-50%) was considerably less than what has been suggested in previous reports (80-88%) it was, nevertheless, well above what has been reported for signs from American Sign Language. Transparency of repetitive signals was significantly higher than that reported for kinetic and static signals. The implications for clinical practice are discussed.

Gesture recognition in patients with aphasia.

This study focuses on the controversial issue of the integrity of gestural communication abilities in subjects with aphasia. To define the ability of subjects to interpret symbolic gestures, an Amer-Ind Recognition Test (ART) was developed which required no verbal response from the examiner or the subject. The relationships between impairment of Amer-Ind signal recognition and (a) severity of aphasia, (b) listening and talking abilities and (c) the type of response picture used were investigated. Whether subjects more often chose related foils than unrelated foils in a forced-choice format was also examined. Two training tests and the ART are described. Results from administration to 15 aphasic subjects indicated that: (a) all subjects performed equally well, regardless of their aphasia severity classification; (b) action picture recognition was related to listening ability; (c) action pictures were easier to identify than object pictures; and (d) on error responses, subjects overwhelmingly chose related over unrelated foils. The possibility that gestural abilities were relatively well preserved among the subjects tested, in the presence of a wide range of listening and talking deficits, is also discussed.

Planning an initial expressive sign lexicon for persons with severe communication impairment.

Selecting an initial sign lexicon for an individual requires far more than simply making a list of useful words or translating a spoken lexicon into signs through use of a sign dictionary. It requires knowledge of child language acquisition, knowledge of manual signs and linguistic constraints on their use, and knowledge of the needs and desires of the individual for whom the lexicon is intended. Suggestions of writers such as Holland (1975) and Lahey and Bloom (1977) are studied in terms of their appropriateness for visual-manual communication and are applied to approximately 50 signs most frequently taught to retarded and autistic persons (Fristoe and Lloyd, 1979a) to aid in lexicon planning. Additional signs are proposed for extending this basic list. The resulting sample lexicon is evaluated against the suggestions of Holland and of Lahey and Bloom. Rationales given for determining these selections, deletions, and additions can be applied to modify this initial lexicon to make it better suited for a specific individual.

Assessment of various auditory perceptual and cognitive skills.

Certain questions regarding auditory skills that are of interest to both researchers and clinicians are raised. These questions have been translated into procedures for assessment of various auditory abilities, resulting in a battery of standardized tests. The main categories of listening skills that are measured are selective attention, auditory discrimination, auditory memory and operations with sounds and/or symbols. The information derived from this battery is discussed in terms of implications for diagnosis and for educational and therapeutic intervention.

Neurotoxicity in uremia.

The dialysis patient is aware that his behavior evokes reciprocal and complicating responses from important people in his environment. These interactions are perceived and conducted by neurochemical mechanisms which may be impaired in the abnormal chemical environment imposed in renal failure. It is the behaviors we comprehend as indicators of disordered nervous mechanisms. Therefore, it is logical that neurophysiological and neurobehavioral phenomena should be measured quantitatively in order 1) to estimate objectively the patients' success in achieving the goal of maintenance dialysis treatment, 2) to assess the comparative adequacy of dialysis regimens and 3) to provide objective endpoint measures which are relevant to uremia for further investigations of the etiology and pathogenesis of these critically significant uremic manifestations. Our experimental results illustrate that: 1) measures of conduction velocity, distal latency and response amplitudes, as employed by us, were relatively insensitive in the patients and circumstances studied; 2) several neurophysiological measures, i.e., the spontaneous EEG, VER latency and, perhaps, photic stimulation, on the other hand, are highly correlated with the severity of renal failure; 3) behavioral measures of sustained attention and alertness (TMT), of short-term memory (ASTM) and of cognitive manipulation of symbols (AR) are also highly correlated with the severity of renal failure; 4) some measured abnormalities improve following dialysis, but not always to normal--three residual impairments may indicate dialysis in adequacy; 5) several of these measures can provide objective evidence for adequacy of dialysis and other clinical and treatment effects in patients with renal failure.