Language involves the use of symbols in the form of words or signs that allow people to communicate their thoughts, ideas, and needs. Even without formal language, many children who are deaf-blind learn to communicate with gestures and object or picture symbols. Symbolic expression makes it possible to express thoughts and feelings about the…

With both high retirement and high attrition rates among educators and a nationwide increasing student population, more teachers are needed. With the impact of a teacher shortage, educational systems began to examine the alternative certification methods. Alternative routes to teacher education profoundly impact the teaching force. The "Ways…

Twenty nonhandicapped preschoolers learned either a list of 20 Blissymbols or an identical list of 20 printed words over period of instructional sessions. Blissymbol Ss acquired list significantly faster. Results are discussed in terms of theoretical assumptions made by Blissymbol proponents and the applicability in terms of theoretical…

This research investigated the extent and nature of the informational support that enables young children to understand pictures as symbols. Two experiments were conducted using an object-retrieval task. The first experiment varied the amount (complete and no instructions) and kind of information (intended function of the symbol and…

Compared to language-matched normal Ss, 15 language-impaired children were advanced in the level and direction of their symbolic play. However, compared to age norms, the language-impaired Ss evidenced deficits in symbolic play. (CL)

The language impaired Ss consistently performed better than Ss matched for mean length of utterance but more poorly than MA matched peers. Only one task, haptic recognition, uncovered a significant difference between the language impaired and MA matched groups. Results suggested that language impaired Ss had deficient nonlinguistic symbolic…

Recent work from an embodied-cognition perspective suggests that symbolic understanding involves bodily actions. Indeed, laboratory evidence and cultural phenomena such as magic rituals and symbolic aggression show that the behaviors evoked by a word and its referent can be quite similar to each other. In other circumstances, however, words and…

Analyzes the vowel position in the words for here" and there" across six language families in order to present evidence for a universal sound symbolism. (MB)

In 4 experiments 120 three-to four-year-old non readers were asked the identity of a symbolic representation as it appeared with different objects. Consistent with Bialystok (2000), many children judged the identity of written words to vary according to the object with which they appeared but few made such errors with recognizable pictures.…

This study examined the relation between symbolic play training and conservation in 30 middle-class nonconserving 4-year-old children. Results showed that 13 experimental subjects manifested some change in solving conservation problems after symbolic play training while only one control subject showed any change toward conservation on the…

Reducing letters to stick symbols facilitates learning spelling patterns for beginning readers, remedial students, adults, and people for whom English is a second language. (JM)

Examines some of the issues that underlie the conceptual structure of the computational approach to cognition. Finds that this approach construes symbolization too narrowly, thereby blocking more adequate treatments of learning and acquisition of skills. Discusses the notion of symbol and symbolization and suggests an alternative approach to the…

Eighty-four sign glosses in the elementary-aged lexicon and 87 in the adolescent/adult lexicon for language-impaired severely mentally retarded individuals were examined for usefulness in terms of eight variables. Concept concreteness and word frequency were significantly represented for adolescent/adult lexicons but not for elementary lexicons.…