Speech Following Sign Language

"Speech Following Sign Language Training in Autistic Children with Minimal Verbal Language," by Yoder and Layton (1988). The authors reported that autistic children fail to develop communicative skills and spoken language has been the target of intervention programs. An alternative procedure includes simultaneous communication which uses spoken language and sigh language regarding key words. While this technique has led to increased spoken language development in autistic children, it remains unclear which is superior, sign training, speech stimulation, or a combination of each. Thus the current study investigated this question.

For this study subjects included 60 minimally verbal autistic children who were randomly assigned to four training conditions: sign training, verbal imitation, simultaneous presentation of sign and speech, and alternating presentation between sign and speech. Findings showed that speech, simultaneous, and alternating conditions facilitated more child-initiated speech during treatment than the sign alone condition. Thus regardless of the training condition, the pretreatment verbal imitation ability was positively predictive of the size of child-initiated spoken vocabulary during training. Findings indicated that pretreatment age and IQ may also be predictive of spoken language development in addition to verbal limitation.

These findings demonstrated that sign alone conditions were not superior for facilitation of child-init

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terns. The results provide a basis for future research, however they provide less utility for the school psychologist dealing with children with disabilities in language development. While it may be helpful to understand that expressive language may be developed more slowly than receptive language in some children, individual variability was also shown. This may actually lead to a conclusion which can be utilized by the school psychologist - that individual variability must be considered. These findings are less applicable than those by Yoder and Layton (1988), are equal in value to those by Eisenmajer et al. (1998), and are less applicable than findings from Heimann, et al. (1995). The authors presented adequate background information to support the need for this study, and the study design was appropriate. The instruments and variables were appropriately described. The method of analysis was extensive and included a discussion of issues that needed to be understood. The discussion was based on logical conclusions and was explained within the context of previous studies. Although limitations were noted, the strengths were judged to result in important findings. While the article was presented in a clear manner, the dis

Category: Psychology - S