hands on creative strategies for language development in signing children nicola grove agosci...
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HANDS ONCreative strategies for
language development in signing childrenNicola Grove
AGOSCI COMMUNICATION: FEEL THE
POWER7-9 May 2009
8/5/09 Nicola Grove
AIMS
• To raise awareness of problems in language development for signing children
• To provide evidence of language development in sign
• To illustrate practical strategies
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TOTAL COMMUNICATION
• The use of all forms of communication that are useful to the child in any context
• Sign and speech are both face to face, best for fast, interpersonal direct communication. Problems with memory and intelligibility
• Sign and gesture good for dynamic action - verbs• Vocalisation and speech - calling attention, emotional
meaning, names• Facial expression and body language, convey attitude
and emotion
• Picture boards; slower, with double focus, but • Useful for names, specfic places and people, recall;
compensates for memory difficulties, more intelligible
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ASSUMPTIONS
• Sign is a useful route to language and communication development
• Some children with ID will remain highly dependent on sign as their means of communication
• They need support and teaching to help them develop their language skills in sign
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SIGN LANGUAGES AND SYSTEMS
• LANGUAGES• Natural evolution• Structure
independent of spoken language
• Primary means of communication
• Australian Sign Language, BSL, ASL
• SYSTEMS• Devised • Structure based on
spoken language• Used as means of
education and remediation
• Makaton, signed English PagetGorman
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SIGN PARAMETERS
• Handshape• Different languages have different subsets• ASLvs BSL
• Location• Movement• Orientation• Handedness• Fingerspelling (from spoken language)• Facial gestures; mouth, brow, head,
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SYNTAX IN SIGN
• Linguistic use of space• Pronominal reference• directionality
• Tense markers
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MORPHOLOGY IN SIGN
• SASS• Incorporation
– Location– Movement (path,manner)– Directional
• Intensifiers• Repetition to show number
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HISTORY OF SIGN SYSTEMS
• Use with children and adults with ID began in 1970s
• Started with people who were Deaf, then with hearing people with problems in the perception and production of speech
• Groups• Intellectual disabilities, SLI, ASD, CP, dysarthria
and dyspraxia, children with oral tract damage,some adults after acquired brain injury
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SIGNERS WITH DISABILITIES
• Deaf children with intellectual/language /physical impairments
• Hearing children with impairments affecting spoken language - eg.
• Specific language impairment• Central auditory processing difficulties• Llandau-Kleffner syndrome• Aphonia
• Children with Down Syndrome
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PROGRESS IN SIGN AND SPEECH
• Vocalisation + gesture• Single words/ single signs• Points +
• Point + Point; Point +word; point+ sign
• Sign + Sign; Sign + Word; Word + Word
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SIGN DEVELOPMENT
• Children go through systematic stages of development of sign parameters
• When looking at the sign use of children with disabilities, bear this normal trajectory in mind
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HANDSHAPE
• Hierarchy of production for young children and people with developmental delays:-
1. Unilateral 2. Bilateral 3. Dominant-Assister 4. Reciprocal.– Bilateral may be earlier than unilateral (mirror
movements)
• Handshape development1. A B 5 2. O (baby O) C G3. Å F 54. V H Y
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LOCATION & MOVEMENT
• Location • Young children use neutral space, arm, head
(cheek, temple, forehead and face)
• Movement1. simple>complex2. contactual action, movement towards signer, up
and down movement3. twisting, circular, convergent, crossing and
entering movements.
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COMMON ERRORS
• add body contact• bring into vision• mirror movements• lack of inhibition of movement• substitute simpler handshape
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FACTORS AFFECTING DEVELOPMENT
+ -
visual feedback no visual feedback
tactile feedback no tactile feedback
movement towards body
movement away from body
movement at midline movement crossing midline
pronation/neutral supination
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USER GROUPS
• Children who can speak but need signs to aid receptive language
• Children who need signs as a transitional stage in developing spoken language
• Children using sign as a back up• Children dependent on sign and gesture
as their main means of communication
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TYPICAL SITUATION
• Isolated - no community of users• Signers have lower status than
speakers• Poor models - one sign per
clause(if you’re lucky)• Small vocabularies dominated by
nouns
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OPTIONS FOR LANGUAGE DEVELOPMENT
• Use spoken language as template - intermodal language
• Word order • Morphology
finger spelling suffixes only
• Develop structure within sign• Sign order• Morphology - inflect signs
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FINDINGS
• Children who are reliant on sign do not use spoken language input as template
• Sign combinations are strings with no underlying structure
• Word order is erratic, in speech as well as sign• They seem to independently discover creative
modifications to sign • They can be taught to change the sign to
communicate complex meanings
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WHY?
• Asymmetry between input and output
(also seen in picture board users: Smith & Grove)
• Lack of models of contrastive order in sign in the input
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SYNTAXprocesses in SEN
• Children learning sign with English(Makaton, Signalong, PGSS)• Sign strings• ABA structures • SV• OV/VO- inconsistent• Does not seem to reflect English WO• Neg usually headshake
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MODIFICATIONS SHOWN BY CHILDREN
• Handshape classifier incorporated in spatial verb
• “Doubling” for plurals, intensifiers• Use of facial expression• Size & shape indicator• Displacement
• Also found in home signers• Usually recognised by conversation partner
(teachers anyway!)
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IDENTIFYING MODIFICATIONS
• A change to the citation form of the sign that is consistent with a change in meaning
• Minimise possibility of underestimating what the child is doing
• Look for the child’s version of the citation form in unmarked contexts
• Check with your knowledge of production errors
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RULES FOR MORPHOLOGY
• Contrast– Weak: walk/walk-ed– Strong; walk-ed/walk-ing
• Consistency– Should appear more than once in
appropriate context
• Generalisation– Seen across types– Walk-ed; climb-ed;(5-6 exemplars usually needed)
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INTERVENTION
• Hand awareness• Moulding/shaping• Imitation• Associated training (in functional
contexts)• Compensatory approach• Use the child’s space, don’t sign
opposite
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ASSESSMENT
• Use activities that maximise contrast
• Dynamic activities, encourage child to tell you what to do
• Video narratives, retell to naïve listener immediately (Spider Sandwich)
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INTERVENTION
• Teach morphological contrasts • Provide complex interesting stimuli
with built in contrasts• Encourage gesture and mime
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EVIDENCERudd, Grove & Pring, 2007• 8 children• Baseline assessments showed some evidence
of spontaneous modification• Intervention taught specific contrasts, using
matrix training with verbs and nouns• Post intervention showed significant
improvements • Two children showed full productive control
with sign modifications contrasted, generalised and used consistently over a limited range
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Supersign challenges
• Designed to stimulate children into creative modifications of sign and gesture
• Based around sign inflections• Face children with a
communication challenge where they have to create their own solutions
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Some challenges1. Sports event - running, jumping,
climbing, swimming - fast/slow; high/low; up/down
2. Hide and seek - use displacement to say where to hide or find and object
3. Spells - harry potter - versions of popular spells eg expelloramus - up,down, round and round, over and over again, different people
4. Giving objects - change handshape to show SASS
5. Barrier communication games - matching objects, picture drawing