Acquisition of expressive signing by autistic children: an evaluation of the relative effects of simultaneous communication and sign-alone training.
Adding speech to sign training only helps if the child already imitates spoken words.
01Research in Context
What this study did
The team compared two ways to teach signs to autistic children.
One group got signs plus spoken words at the same time. The other group got signs only.
They switched the teaching style back and forth for each child to see which moved faster.
What they found
Both styles produced new signs. Neither style won on speed.
One child who already copied speech used signs more when words came with them. The mute child did not.
How this fits with other research
Pierce et al. (1983) ran a near-copy of this study with echolalic kids and saw total communication win every time. The difference: their children already echoed words.
Gentry et al. (1980) tested one mute child three years earlier and found total communication much faster. The single-case design may have overstated the edge.
Shield et al. (2016) looks like a clash: native-signing autistic children still lag behind deaf peers. The key is population. The 1983 kids were new sign learners; the 2016 group had sign from birth yet still showed autism-related gaps.
Why it matters
If a child copies speech, pair signs with words. If the child is mute, save your breath and teach signs alone. Check echo skills first; it takes five minutes and picks the faster road.
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02At a glance
03Original abstract
Two methods of training autistic children to use manual signs were compared. Two children, one mute and one capable of some verbal imitation, were taught to use signs as expressive labels for pictures of objects. Using an alternating treatments design, speed of sign acquisition was compared across two training conditions in which signs were presented either accompanied by, or without, the corresponding verbal label. In both conditions, the training procedure incorporated reinforcement, modeling, prompting, fading, and stimulus rotation. The efficacy of training in both treatment conditions was demonstrated by the use of a multiple baseline control across signs, but no clear differences in acquisition speed across conditions were apparent. Posttests conducted to assess stimulus control of signing, and learning of verbal labels when these were present in training, showed that the behavior of the imitative, but not the mute, child was controlled by the verbal stimuli. The implications of the results both for understanding deficits characteristic of autistic children and for developing appropriate language training procedures are discussed.
Journal of applied behavior analysis, 1983 · doi:10.1901/jaba.1983.16-315