This study examined the effect of a 1-day, 6-hour key word signing (KWS) workshop on in-service special education teachers' and speech-language pathologists' (SLPs) (a) skill identifying American Sign Language (ASL) signs; (b) skill producing ASL signs; (c) use of KWS in the classroom or therapy room; and (d) perceived changes from taking part in…

Introduction: Children with CHARGE syndrome often experience significantly delayed motor development, which affects their performance in many motor skills and physical activities. The purpose of this study was to determine the status of physical education provided to children with CHARGE syndrome. There were five main areas of focus: (1) physical…

Signs selected from lists used in studies with mentally retarded and autistic children and previously rated for visual iconicity were presented tactilely to 13 blind adults and adolescents. Visual and tactile ratings were found to be very similar across blind, deaf, and hearing-sighted adults and hearing-sighted children. (Author/CL)

The paper presents a critical review of studies dealing with manual communication training for severely reading disabled students plus the case report of two severely reading disabled adolescents given reading instruction with the aid of fingerspelling and sign language. (Author/CL)

Twenty-four severely mentally retarded adolescents (with no uncorrected visual or hearing losses) were trained to use 16 manually signed English signs. Ss were randomly assiged to sign only, or sign plus speech conditions and performances were videotaped. Analysis of results revealed that all Ss learned some signs to criterion and all showed…

Effects of high and low levels of manual sign translucency and referential concreteness on the manual sign learning of 40 moderately/severely mentally retarded adolescents were investigated. High levels of translucency were a significant facilitator while low levels inhibited learning. Concreteness did not significantly affect sign learning.…

Investigated was ability of adolescent deaf students to comprehend language under three conditions: lipreading with voice, the Rochester method, and total communication. (KW)

Presents study designed to determine whether interruption in the use of the manual encoding modality would retard learning in prelingually deaf subjects. One group of students used finger spelling and finger numeration in learning eight pairs of number-word combinations while the other group used no manual encoding. Results show groups using…

Reviews research on "homesign" systems, i.e., the gestural communication of deaf individuals who do not learn a spoken language and who are not exposed to a signed language. The article touches on how iconicity affects language structure and use, the role of input in language development, and the nature of the critical period for…

The purposes of the study involving four severely handicapped students (11 to 16 years old) were to examine whether the acquisition of instruction- following behavior is facilitated by the presentation of manual signs with verbal instructions and whether manual and verbal expressive abilities are acquired as an indirect result of receptive…

Ten children and adolescents with severe mental retardation were assigned in matched pairs to either a lexigram augmentative communication condition (graphic symbols) or a control condition (social stimulation). The three subjects who successfully acquired lexigrams also exhibited changes in attention, intentional communication, and sociability.…

Three papers comment on a paper by Abrahamsen et al (EC 212 728) on concomitants of success in acquiring an augmentative communication system (AAC) by persons with severe mental retardation. Comments focus on design and methodological requirements, principles of AAC, and sequence and process in indirect aspects of communicative gains. (DB)

The study with 23 severely hearing impaired adolescents found that subjects using cued speech performed highest on Piagetian conservation problems, the oral-aural group performed better on linguistically-sensitive metaphor problems. Differences were not, however, statistically significant. (Author/DB)