HANDS ON

1. HANDS ON Creative strategies for language development in signing children Nicola Grove AGOSCI COMMUNICATION: FEEL THE POWER 7-9 May 2009

2. AIMS • To raise awareness of problems in language development for signing children • To provide evidence of language development in sign • To illustrate practical strategies Nicola Grove

3. 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 Nicola Grove

4. 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 Nicola Grove

5. CORTICAL REPRESENTATION Nicola Grove

6. 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 SIGN LANGUAGES AND SYSTEMS Nicola Grove

7. SIGN PARAMETERS • Handshape • Different languages have different subsets • ASLvs BSL • Location • Movement • Orientation • Handedness • Fingerspelling (from spoken language) • Facial gestures; mouth, brow, head, Nicola Grove

8. SYNTAX IN SIGN • Linguistic use of space • Pronominal reference • directionality • Tense markers Nicola Grove

9. MORPHOLOGY IN SIGN • SASS • Incorporation • Location • Movement (path,manner) • Directional • Intensifiers • Repetition to show number Nicola Grove

10. 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 Nicola Grove

11. 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 Nicola Grove

12. PROGRESS IN SIGN AND SPEECH • Vocalisation + gesture • Single words/ single signs • Points + • Point + Point; Point +word; point+ sign • Sign + Sign; Sign + Word; Word + Word Nicola Grove

13. 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 Nicola Grove

14. 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 development 1. A B 5 2. O (baby O) C G 3. Å F 5 4. V H Y  Nicola Grove

15. LOCATION & MOVEMENT • Location • Young children use neutral space, arm, head (cheek, temple, forehead and face) • Movement • simple>complex • contactual action, movement towards signer, up and down movement • twisting, circular, convergent, crossing and entering movements. Nicola Grove

16. COMMON ERRORS • add body contact • bring into vision • mirror movements • lack of inhibition of movement • substitute simpler handshape Nicola Grove

17. FACTORS AFFECTING DEVELOPMENT Nicola Grove

18. 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 Nicola Grove

19. 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 Nicola Grove

20. 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 Nicola Grove

21. 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 Nicola Grove

22. 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 Nicola Grove

23. 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 Nicola Grove

24. 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!) Nicola Grove

25. 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 Nicola Grove

26. 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) Nicola Grove

27. INTERVENTION • Hand awareness • Moulding/shaping • Imitation • Associated training (in functional contexts) • Compensatory approach • Use the child’s space, don’t sign opposite Nicola Grove

28. 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) Nicola Grove

29. INTERVENTION • Teach morphological contrasts • Provide complex interesting stimuli with built in contrasts • Encourage gesture and mime Nicola Grove

30. 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 Nicola Grove

31. 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 Nicola Grove

32. Some challenges Sports event - running, jumping, climbing, swimming - fast/slow; high/low; up/down Hide and seek - use displacement to say where to hide or find and object Spells - harry potter - versions of popular spells eg expelloramus - up,down, round and round, over and over again, different people Giving objects - change handshape to show SASS Barrier communication games - matching objects, picture drawing Nicola Grove