Communicating with an autistic boy by gestures.
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Recent technologic advances have permitted the observation of rapid and significant increases in blood pressure (BP) during verbal communication. The magnitude of the increase in BP is influenced by rate of speech, audience size, status, affective content, environmental setting, and resting BP. The current study evaluates the effect of communicating without vocalizing in 38 deaf adults. Similar to speaking individuals, deaf individuals exhibited significant increases in BP and heart rate (HR) while signing, and the magnitude of the increases were related to resting BP levels. These findings suggest that communication, independent of vocalization, has significant effects on the cardiovascular system. Further studies are needed to explore other dimensions of cardiovascular-communication relationships in deaf populations.
This report describes the authors' experience in providing medical and contraceptive care to a profoundly hearing impaired adolescent in a hospital setting. Ways to communicate effectively with the hearing impaired are described.
This study examined the associations between mothers' estimates of both hearing family members' competence in sign language and their deaf child's loneliness. 32 mothers of children who functioned as deaf were asked to assess their hearing family members' competence in sign language and to complete the UCLA Loneliness Scale for an estimate of their deaf child's loneliness. Significant positive correlations were found among hearing family members' estimated competence in sign language; however, no significant correlations were found between hearing family members' estimated competence in sign language and their deaf child's estimated loneliness. These findings suggest that hearing members may contribute to each other's competence in sign language and may communicate with their deaf child through alternative methods rather than formal sign language.
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Three experiments used a laboratory analogue to the task of driving to look at drivers' responses to encounters with a bicyclist at a T-junction. In particular, a comparison was made between the bicyclist indicating an upcoming turn with an arm signal, an informal signal of intent, or no signal. Overall, arm signals worked relatively well to inform drivers of the bicyclist's intentions and were easier to perceive than informal signals. It was also found that simple failures to react to the bicyclist in time were more common at shorter thinking times whereas incorrect positive responses were unaffected by thinking time. Most interestingly, these experiments showed that arm signals often slowed down the participants' decision-making processes, leading to a lower probability of their stopping in time when the bicyclist was at risk. Moreover, the same was true for informal signals in which there was eye-contact between the bicyclist and the participant. It is suggested that these effects come about because both arm signals and eye-contact are communicative acts and therefore invoke extra stages of involuntary cognitive processing in the drivers, thereby slowing their reactions.
UNLABELLED: Vowel durations following the production of voiced and voiceless stop consonants produced during simultaneous communication (SC) were investigated by recording sign language users during SC and speech alone (SA). Under natural speaking conditions, or speaking alone (SA), vowels following voiced stop consonants are longer in duration than vowels following voiceless stops. Although the results indicated longer sentence durations for SC than SA, they showed no differences in the relative duration of vowels following voiced or voiceless stops. Vowel durations following voiced stop consonants were consistently longer than vowel durations following voiceless stops. This finding is consistent with previous research indicating that global temporal alterations in SC do not degrade temporal or spectral cues of spoken English. LEARNING OUTCOMES: As a result of this activity, the participant will be able to (1) describe simultaneous communication; (2) explain the role of simultaneous communication in communication with persons who are hearing-impaired; (3) describe how the voicing characteristic of syllable-initial consonants affects the duration of subsequent vowels; and (4) explain that simultaneous communication does not influence the relative durations of vowels following voiced and voiceless stop consonants.
In the present single case study the reactions of a severely mentally handicapped adult with autistic behaviour to simple instructions were investigated; in each case with and without gestural facilitation. This procedure was varied both with regard to persons and to situations. The correct following of requests as well as special behaviour such as uncertainty, smiling, delay of reactions and enthusiasm was registered and analysed by videotape. It could be clearly proved that the requests which were supported by gestures were more often performed correctly. On top of that it could be observed that under these circumstances the handicapped person was less uncertain, showed fewer stereotypies and was generally more interested. No influence could be noticed on the delay of reaction as well as on the person's enthusiasm. No difference could be seen between different persons and situations. Further research projects should particularly analyse how far the use of gestures does not only serve more communication but also has an influence on the range of behavioural disorders.
The Test of Auditory Comprehension of Language (TACL) (Carrow, 1973) was administered on two occasions to two groups of hearing-impaired children. The test was administered in the usual manner (face-to-face, spoken) to children who were being educated by oral methods. The test was also simultaneously spoken and signed to children who were being educated by total-communication methods. Reliability of responses was high for both groups (r = 0.96 for oral-aural and 0.90 for total-communication children) and error patterns were similar. The TACL appears to be an appropriate and reliable instrument for use with hearing-impaired children.
A review of the literature about communication between health care professionals and deaf people demonstrates that a continuum of accuracy in perceptions of deaf people and their communication problems exists in health care settings. The author provides information on deaf culture, history, population size, sign language, and communication needs that is used to evaluate professional journal articles. Examples of research on this topic are presented and the need for further studies and the role of social workers are discussed.
The aim of the present study was to advance the knowledge of the linguistic development of students with prelingual profound deafness, especially the acquisition and use of prepositions in Spanish, a lexical category with an important role in the verbal comprehension. The researchers sought to learn the level of mastery students with prelingual profound deafness can achieve in the command of prepositions, depending on the system of communication they have been exposed to: classic oralism, Cued Speech, or signed language. The results show that the different systems of communication contribute, to different degrees, to the acquisition of Spanish prepositions, with the best results being obtained with Cued Speech.
Deaf patients depend on intermediate vision for interpersonal communication. Deaf presbyopes are at a particular disadvantage since they are usually corrected for near and far vision with bifocals without consideration of their intermediate vision. Progressive addition lenses were used in this study to provide an intermediate correction for a group of deaf presbyopes. The patients' communication ability was tested through Varilux II lenses and habitual bifocals on a series of standardized lip reading and sign language tests. The patients showed better visual communication skills with the progressive adds, a preference for the progressive adds, and the impression of better vision through the progressive addition lens as opposed to their habitual bifocals.
This longitudinal study investigated the acquisition of question formation in spoken English and American Sign Language (ASL) by two young hearing children of deaf parents. The linguistic environment of the children included varying amounts of exposure and interaction with normal speech and with the nonstandard speech of their deaf parents. This atypical speech environment did not impede the children's acquisition of English question forms. The two children also acquired question forms in ASL that are similar to those produced by deaf children of deaf parents. The two languages, ASL and English, developed in parallel fashion in the two children, and the two systems did not interfere with each other. This dual language development is illustrated by utterances in which the children communicated a sentence in spoken English and ASL simultaneously, with normal English structure in the spoken version and sign language structure in the ASL version.
Hearing-impaired children were individually administered a task in which possession of accumulating candy rewards was made contingent upon the child's decision to stop any further accumulation of the candy. Hearing-impaired children, who under instruction periodically made American Sign Language (ASL) statements about the goodness of the reward, waited significantly longer before terminating the waiting period than did hearing-impaired children instructed to sign statements about the act of waiting and somewhat longer than did hearing-impaired children instructed to sign a neutral statement. Since the pattern of delay was unlike that reported in earlier investigations when nonhandicapped children verbalized similar statements and since variation in mode of communication did not influence delay in nonhandicapped children in the present investigation, the results were interpreted in terms of differences in cognitive controlling mechanisms between nonhandicapped and hearing-impaired children.
This article describes activities of a Transcultural Patient Care Committee whose aim is to develop the knowledge and skills of medical center staff to provide culturally congruent care. The activities include staff development offerings, a transcultural patient care resource manual, and communication and assessment tools. These efforts have provided a foundation to assist staff with meeting the challenge of caring for multicultural patients.
Humans speak and produce symbolic gestures. Do these two forms of communication interact, and how? First, we tested whether the two communication signals influenced each other when emitted simultaneously. Participants either pronounced words, or executed symbolic gestures, or emitted the two communication signals simultaneously. Relative to the unimodal conditions, multimodal voice spectra were enhanced by gestures, whereas multimodal gesture parameters were reduced by words. In other words, gesture reinforced word, whereas word inhibited gesture. In contrast, aimless arm movements and pseudo-words had no comparable effects. Next, we tested whether observing word pronunciation during gesture execution affected verbal responses in the same way as emitting the two signals. Participants responded verbally to either spoken words, or to gestures, or to the simultaneous presentation of the two signals. We observed the same reinforcement in the voice spectra as during simultaneous emission. These results suggest that spoken word and symbolic gesture are coded as single signal by a unique communication system. This signal represents the intention to engage a closer interaction with a hypothetical interlocutor and it may have a meaning different from when word and gesture are encoded singly.
Four groups of deaf subjects between the age of 10-0 and 18-11 years were tested, employing the Test of Syntactic Ability, and the language subtests of the Stanford Achievement Test, in a study of the influence of early language and communication environment on later syntactic language ability. The groups, 18 subjects in each, were dichotomized by whether the parents were hearing or deaf and further subgrouped by the language ability of the parents if the parents were deaf, and by the amount and intensity of oral preschool training provided by the parents if the parents were hearing. The groups were labeled by the type of language used with them in infancy and early childhood: manual English, average manual, intensive oral, and average oral. Results showed significant superiority of the manual English group over the two oral groups on five of the six major test structures of the Test of Syntactic Ability. On the Stanford Achievement Test, the manual English group performed significantly better than the other three groups on all four subtests. The two manual groups performed significantly better than the two oral groups on every test measure employed.
This case study describes a Wernicke's aphasic who had spontaneously developed a communication pattern involving a large portion of body communication to convey factual information. The study is longitudinal and compares the development of body communication and speech (here: the use of nouns, verbs, adjectives, and pronouns) during the 18-month period of rehabilitation. There is a clear development, showing an increased use of nouns, verbs, and adjectives and a decreased use of body communication to convey factual information. This is taken to show that compensatory body communication for factual information can be used by Wernicke's aphasics, something that is easily obscured by the finding often reported that most aphasics tend to show body communication patterns that are in accordance with their speech patterns. The role of pronouns and gestures for turnkeeping at an intermediate stage, when the patient is shifting from gestures to words for factual content, is also discussed.