Evaluation of language and communication skills in adult key word signing users with intellectual disability: advantages of a narrative task.
A five-minute story task gives a valid snapshot of both spoken words and key-word-signing skills in adults with ID.
01Research in Context
What this study did
Meuris et al. (2014) built a five-minute story task for adults with intellectual disability.
The adults already used key-word signing and some spoken words.
Staff asked each adult to tell a short story while a camera rolled.
Researchers later counted signs, words, and grammar.
They compared these counts to two gold-standard tests and to a free-chat sample.
What they found
The quick story score lined up almost perfectly with long language tests.
It also caught every sign the adults used, something the chat sample missed.
In short, a tiny story gave a true picture of both speech and signing skills.
How this fits with other research
DiStefano et al. (2020) warn that most tests floor out for severe ID.
The new task sidesteps this by letting adults sign and speak at once, matching the 2020 fix list.
Newell et al. (2025) saw weak stories in kids with Down syndrome and called for extra cohesion training.
Kristien’s adults told richer stories, likely because key-word signing gave them more expressive tools.
The papers seem to clash, but age, diagnosis, and modality differ—adults with mixed speech/sign beat kids who relied on speech alone.
Why it matters
You now have a fast, valid ruler for adults who use both words and signs.
Run the five-minute story at intake, yearly review, or before discharge.
Score signs plus words to see real growth that standardized tests can hide.
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02At a glance
03Original abstract
The evaluation of language and communication skills in adults who use augmentative and alternative communication (AAC) in general and key word signing (KWS) in particular, can be an elaborate task. Besides being time-consuming and not very similar to natural communication, standard language tests often do not take AAC or KWS into account. Therefore, we developed a narrative task specifically for adults with intellectual disability (ID) who use KWS. The task was evaluated in a group of 40 adult KWS users. Outcome measures on the narrative task correlated significantly with measures of standard language and communication tests for verbal language, but not for use of manual signs. All narrative measures, for both verbal language and manual signing, correlated highly with similar measures from a conversation sample. The developed narrative task proved useful and valid to evaluate the language and communication skills of adults with ID taking into account both their verbal language and manual sign use.
Research in developmental disabilities, 2014 · doi:10.1016/j.ridd.2014.06.020