Visual-graphic symbol acquisition in school age children with developmental and language delays

Abstract

Augmented language systems have become both an integral component of communication intervention programs for children with severe communicative impairments and spurred research on their language and communication development. This study examined intrinsic and extrinsic factors that may influence the language development process for children with developmental disabilities, by exploring the relationship between varying degrees of symbol arbitrariness and extant speech comprehension skills in the discrimination, learning, and use of symbols for communication. For the study, 13 school-aged participants (M = 8.24 [years; months]), with both developmental and language delays, were provided experience with iconic Blissymbols and an arbitrary symbol set of lexigrams via observational computerized experience sessions. There was a modest difference in their ability to learn arbitrary versus iconic symbols. There were no differences if the vocabulary item was unknown prior to the symbol learning experience. These findings suggest that iconicity of a symbol may not be a critical factor in learning a symbol-referent relationship if a target referent is not yet known in comprehension.

Keywords:

• Iconicity
• developmental disabilities
• intervention
• comprehension
• graphic symbols

Acknowledgements

Andrea Barton-Hulsey is now at Florida State University. Amy Hyatt Fonseca is an independent author and serves as the managing editor at the nonprofit Women @ the Frontier. We wish to thank the children and their families who participated in this study.

Notes

1 Picture Communication Symbols is a product of Mayer-Johnson (part of the Tobi Dynavox Family), Pittsburgh, PA. www.mayer-johnson.com/pages/pcs-symbol-collections.

Additional information

Funding

This research was supported by the National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders of the National Institutes of Health [R03DC03766] awarded to Rose A. Sevcik. The content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of the National Institutes of Health.