Simplified Signs: A Manual Sign-Communication System for Special Populations

Tracy T. Dooley, Filip T. Loncke, Nicole Kissane Lee, John D. Bonvillian

Description

Simplified Signs presents a system of manual sign communication intended for special populations who have had limited success mastering spoken or full sign languages. It is the culmination of over twenty years of research and development by the authors. The Simplified Sign System has been developed and tested for ease of sign comprehension, memorization, and formation by limiting the complexity of the motor skills required to form each sign, and by ensuring that each sign visually resembles the meaning it conveys.

Volume 1 outlines the research underpinning and informing the project, and places the Simplified Sign System in a wider context of sign usage, historically and by different populations. Volume 2 presents the lexicon of signs, totalling approximately 1000 signs, each with a clear illustration and a written description of how the sign is formed, as well as a memory aid that connects the sign visually to the meaning that it conveys.


While the Simplified Sign System originally was developed to meet the needs of persons with intellectual disabilities, cerebral palsy, autism, or aphasia, it may also assist the communication needs of a wider audience – such as healthcare professionals, aid workers, military personnel , travellers or parents, and children who have not yet mastered spoken language.  The system also has been shown to enhance learning for individuals studying a foreign language.


Lucid and comprehensive, this work constitutes a valuable resource that will enhance the communicative interactions of many different people, and will be of great interest to researchers and educators alike.

 

Sujets

• Mental retardation
• Cerebral palsy
• C (programming language)
• Autism
• Aphasia

Informations

• Publié par: Open Book Publishers
• Date de parution: 30 juillet 2020
• Nombre de lectures: 3
• EAN13: 9781783749263
• Langue: English

Extrait

Simplified Signs: Vol. 1

Simplified Signs: A Manual Sign-Communication System for Special Populations
Volume 1: Principles, Background, and Application
John D. Bonvillian, Nicole Kissane Lee, Tracy T. Dooley, and Filip T. Loncke
Illustrated by Val Nelson-Metlay





https://www.openbookpublishers.com
© 2020 John D. Bonvillian, Nicole Kissane Lee, Tracy T. Dooley and Filip T. Loncke.
Illustrations by Val Nelson-Metlay.




This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license (CC BY 4.0). This license allows you to share, copy, distribute and transmit the text; to adapt the text and to make commercial use of the text providing attribution is made to the authors (but not in any way that suggests that they endorse you or your use of the work). Attribution should include the following information:
John D. Bonvillian, Nicole Kissane Lee, Tracy T. Dooley and Filip T. Loncke, Simplified Signs: A Manual Sign-Communication System for Special Populations, Volume 1 . Cambridge, UK: Open Book Publishers, 2020, https://doi.org/10.11647/OBP.0205
In order to access detailed and updated information on the license, please visit https://doi.org/10.11647/OBP.0205#copyright
Further details about CC BY licenses are available at https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
All external links were active at the time of publication unless otherwise stated and have been archived via the Internet Archive Wayback Machine at https://archive.org/web
Updated digital material and resources associated with this volume are available at https://doi.org/10.11647/OBP.0205#resources
Every effort has been made to identify and contact copyright holders and any omission or error will be corrected if notification is made to the publisher.
ISBN Paperback: 978-1-78374-923-2
ISBN Hardback: 978-1-78374-924-9
ISBN Digital (PDF): 978-1-78374-925-6
ISBN Digital ebook (epub): 978-1-78374-926-3
ISBN Digital ebook (mobi): 978-1-78374-927-0
ISBN XML: 978-1-78374-928-7
DOI: 10.11647/OBP.0205
Cover Image and design by Anna Gatti.

Contents
Preface and Acknowledgments
xi
Postscript
xxiii
1.
Introduction
1
Addressing Concerns about Sign-Communication Training and Teaching
4
Special Populations
8
The Simplified Sign System
12
Goals, Clarifications, and Recommendations
21
Other Potential Users of the Simplified Sign System
23
Contents and Structure of the Two Volumes
28
2.
Use of Manual Signs and Gestures by Hearing Persons: Historical Perspectives
31
The Origins of Language
33
Signs as a Natural and Universal Form of Communication
37
Gestural and Sign Use Cross-Culturally
40
Sign Communication in North America
42
Europeans in the New World and their Communicative Interactions through Signs
47
Early European Gestural Communication
51
Concluding Remarks
54
3.
Deaf Persons and Sign Languages
55
Deaf Education and the Recognition of Sign Languages
56
Sign Production
63
Different Sign Languages and Obstacles to Sign Communication Worldwide
68
Unique Aspects of Sign Languages
72
Iconic Signs
76
Sign Language Acquisition
82
Concluding Remarks
90
4.
Sign Communication in Persons with an Intellectual Disability or with Cerebral Palsy
93
An Early Study
95
Intellectual Disability
97
Cerebral Palsy
119
Recommendations for Enhancing the Sign-Learning Environment
127
Selecting Signs
137
5.
Childhood Autism and Sign Communication
141
Childhood Autism
142
Sign-Communication Training and Teaching
152
Dispelling Myths
158
Teaching Generalization and Spontaneous Communication Skills
162
Motor and Imitation Abilities
164
Other Non-Oral Approaches
172
Evaluative Comments
183
6.
Sign-Communication Intervention in Adults and Children with Aphasia
187
Introduction to Aphasia and Apraxia
188
Sign-Communication Training Outcomes
197
Sign Facilitation of Spoken Language
210
Acquired Childhood Aphasia and Landau-Kleffner Syndrome
214
Developmental Language Disorder and Childhood Apraxia of Speech
220
Concluding Remarks
233
7.
Use of Manual Signs and Gestures by Hearing Persons: Contemporary Perspectives
235
Teaching Signs to Hearing Infants of Hearing Parents
237
Socioeconomic Intervention Programs and Language
243
Attention-Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) in Academic Settings
250
Using Manual Signs to Improve Reading Comprehension
255
Facilitating Foreign Language Vocabulary Acquisition
258
Learning to Sign May Positively Affect One’s Cognitive Abilities
268
Concluding Remarks
277
8.
Development of the Simplified Sign System
281
Background Information
281
Step One: Iconic Sign Selection
288
Step Two: Sign Formation Modification
290
Step Three: Testing of Simplified Signs with Undergraduate Students
293
Step Four: Comparison Testing of Simplified Signs
298
Step Five: Feedback from Users
303
Step Six: Memory Aids
305
Concluding Remarks
308
9.
Application and Use of the Simplified Sign System with Persons with Disabilities
311
Approaches to Teaching the Simplified Sign System
312
Guidelines for Using the Simplified Sign System
318
Frequently Asked Questions
330
Concluding Remarks
345
Appendix A: Sign Language Dictionaries and Other Sources
347
Appendix B: Handshapes
351
Appendix C: Palm, Finger, and Knuckle Orientation
357
Palm Orientation
357
Finger/Knuckle Orientation
360
Glossary
369
References
435
Author Biographies
555
Name Index
559
Subject Index
594

This book is gratefully dedicated to our parents and to the members of our families.

Preface and Acknowledgments

© J. D. Bonvillian & W. B. Bonvillian, CC BY 4.0 https://doi.org/10.11647/OBP.0205.10
The inspiration for the development of the Simplified Sign System occurred some years ago, in the late 1980s. A former student and I had recently completed a research project that examined various factors associated with non-speaking children’s success in learning signs to communicate ( Bonvillian & Blackburn, 1991). Most of the participants in that study were students diagnosed with autism at the Grafton School in Virginia. Because these students had failed to make significant progress in learning to speak, they had been taught to communicate through American Sign Language ( ASL) signs. ASL is the principal language of the Deaf community in the United States.
After the research project ended, I met with Gail Mayfield, the director of the autism program at Grafton, to discuss the results. One of the findings was that scores on tests of the students’ motor abilities predicted their acquisition of ASL signs. Many of the students had also obtained quite low scores on these tests of motor abilities. Furthermore, those children with more impaired motor skills tended to acquire relatively few signs and rarely combined them into more complex utterances.
These results surprised me because previous investigators had consistently stated that motor skills in children with autism were largely unimpaired. These findings, however, did not surprise Gail. As the director of a program that had used signs with children with autism for over a decade, Gail had seen firsthand the difficulties that many of her students experienced with motor tasks and sign formation. Gail made a point of underlining what she perceived as a serious problem in her students’ communication training: many of them clearly had problems accurately forming the signs that they were being taught. In her opinion, the combination of the students’ motor difficulties and the formational complexity of many ASL signs made her students’ sign learning only a limited success.
Gail then made a fervent request: would it be possible to address the problems she witnessed daily by developing a simplified form of sign communication that would be easier for her students to learn? I told her that such an undertaking, properly conducted, would likely prove quite difficult and time-consuming. To accomplish such a task, I felt that more research needed to be conducted in several different areas. One such area was sign acquisition in developing children: how do young children without discerni