Exploring visual-graphic symbol acquisition by pre-school age children with developmental and language delays

Abstract

The process of language acquisition requires an individual to organize the world through a system of symbols and referents. For children with severe intellectual disabilities and language delays, the ability to link a symbol to its referent may be a difficult task. In addition to the intervention strategy, issues such as the visual complexity and iconicity of a symbol arise when deciding what to select as a medium to teach language. This study explored the ability of four pre-school age children with developmental and language delays to acquire the meanings of Blissymbols and lexigrams using an observational experiential language intervention. In production, all four of the participants demonstrated symbol-referent relationships, while in comprehension, three of the four participants demonstrated at least emerging symbol-referent relationships. Although the number of symbols learned across participants varied, there were no differences between the learning of arbitrary and comparatively iconic symbols. The participants' comprehension skills appeared to influence their performance.

Keywords:

• Iconicity
• Developmental disabilities
• Comprehension
• Graphic symbols
• Language intervention

Notes

1 A fifth participant began the study, but only completed four sessions, thus, he is not included in this report.

2 One set of four trials was administered for each level of representation for a total of 16 trials. The objects used to evaluate their skill were a toy telephone, book, toy car, and crayon. Each object, photograph, or line drawing was tested once for each condition. The child was given either the object or photograph and instructed to find this one from an array of three of the other objects, photographs, or line drawings placed in one of three bins in front of them. No specific feedback as to the correctness of the response was offered, though the child was given general praise for completing the trial.