Describes the spontaneous development of 13 symbolic gestures in a normal infant from 12 to 17 months. Sixteen additional symbolic gestures were purposefully taught. Vocal development was advanced, indicating that gesturing is not necessarily related to poor vocal skills. Data support the hypothesis that sensorimotor behaviors are natural…

The investigation compared the transparency of 11 different types of symbols with 40 nonspeaking mentally retarded subjects (ages 4-20). Analysis indicated a hierarchy of difficulty with actual objects the easiest and Blissymbols and written words the hardest to understand. Results have implications for selecting initial symbol systems for…

Standard or enhanced Blissymbols, designed to represent familiar actions, attributes, and objects, were shown to 20 3 year olds, who guessed their meaning. The number of their guesses that referred to the enhancements was twice as great as the number that referred to the standard Blissymbol base. (Author/JDD)

Forty 3-year-olds learned either 12 standard Blissymbols (SBS) or their enhanced forms (EBS). Results demonstrated that the subjects learned EBS faster than SBS, remembered more EBS than SBS, did not differ in the communicative use of SBS and EBS, and were affected more negatively when presented with the untrained SBS than EBS. (Author/JDD)

Used descriptive analysis and a forced choice task to investigate childrens' and adults' production, interpretation, and judgment of notation. Results showed that young children may not impose the same symbol-meaning structure at decoding that was proposed at encoding. Only after this ability develops does a preference for one form-one function…

The comparative translucency within and across 5 aided augmentative and alternative symbol systems for symbols representing 3 parts of speech (nouns, verbs, and modifiers) was investigated with 50 college undergraduates. Results indicated that translucency varies among systems or sets and among parts of speech. (Author/DB)

An exploration of the interpretive potential semiotics offers for study and understanding of meaning production in science classrooms is presented. Some very basic concepts of the theory are introduced, followed by analysis of a single science lesson. The organization of the room, the structure of the lesson, and the behavior and interaction of…

The investigation examined the transparency and recall of symbols representing three parts of speech (nouns, verbs, and descriptors) from three different graphic symbol systems (Blissymbols, Picture Communication System, and Picsyms) among adults with intellectual handicaps. Results suggested that Blissymbols were the least transparent and hardest…

The study compared play among five groups of children (ages 3-7 years): normal children (N=41); those diagnosed with language delays (N=241), those with autism but normal intelligence (N=71), those with autism and mental retardation (N=97), and those with nonautistic mental deficiency (N=86). Each child was evaluated using a 25 minute structured…

This study evaluated ease of learning 5 visual symbol sets (photopictorial, rebus, Blissymbolics, orthography, and Premack-type tokens) with 4 autistic students (ages 7-13). A second article describes the development of instructional procedures for the students, noting the contribution of behavioral, cognitive developmental, and information…