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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CORTICAL REPRESENTATION

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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