Effects of Manual Signing on Communicative ...

JASH 2001, Vol. 26, No.2, 120-126

copyright 2001 by The Association for Persons with Severe Handicaps

Brief Report

Effects of Manual Signing on Communicative Verbalizations by Toddlers With and Without Disabilities in Inclusive Classrooms Cynthia F. DiCarlo, Sarintha Stricklin, and Meher Banajee Louisiana State University Health Sciences Center Dennis H. Reid Carolina Behavior Analysis and Support Center Inclusive programs involving toddlers with and without disabilities are becoming increasingly common. However, little research has evaluated the effects of specific aspects of inclusive services on participating children without disabilities. Due in part to parental concerns over a potentially reductive impact of manual signing on the communicative verbalizations of children without disabilities, we evaluated effects of manual signing by a classroom teacher on verbalizations of toddlers in an inclusive classroom. Manual signing was introduced sequentially by the teacher within ongoing verbal interactions with the toddlers in three play activities. Results indicated that teacher signing was accompanied by increases in communicative interactions involving signing with the teacher by each group of toddlers with and without disabilities. No reductive effects on communicative verbalizations were observed for any toddler group. These results offer support for using signing in an inclusive classroom without detrimental effects on the verbal functioning of children without disabilities. Future research should focus on conducting similar evaluations in other types of inclusive settings.

tion directed to participating children without disabilities (Staub, Schwartz, Gallucci, & Peck, 1994). Research is needed to evaluate how aspects of inclusive services impact young children without disabilities. One aspect of inclusive services that warrants research attention is the effect of manual signing on the communicative functioning of children without disabilities. Manual signing is used frequently with children with disabilities (Schwartz, Garfinkle, & Bauer, 1998) in inclusive settings. However, the impact of signing on the communication of children without disabilities in inclusive settings has not received research attention. Such research is warranted for several reasons. First, manual signing is used frequently with children with communication delays. Second, despite professional consensus that teaching manual signing does not have detrimental effects on children's verbal development (Schwartz et al., 1998), contradictory views exist (Noonan & McCormick, 1993). Third, parents often express concern that a child's speech may be hindered if the child communicates with manual signing (Acredolo & Goodwyn, 1996). Such concern can exist among parents of children without disabilities as they observe staff using manual signing. Concern can also arise if parents observe their children using manual signing, which is a potential development in inclusive settings in which staff sign while interacting with children. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the effects of manual signing by staff in an inclusive setting on the frequency of verbalizations among young children with and without disabilities.

DESCRIPTORS: toddlers, disabilities, inclusive settings Providing supports and services in inclusive settings has become a major emphasis within early intervention programs for children with disabilities. Research evaluating inclusive services has focused on the benefits for children with disabilities, with relatively minimal atten-

Method

Appreciation is expressed to Marsha Parsons for her assistance with manuscript preparation. Address all correspondence and requests for reprints to Cyndi DiCarlo, Human Development Center, Louisiana State University Health Sciences Center, 1100 Florida Avenue, New Orleans, LA 70119.

Setting and Participants The study was conducted in an inclusive early intervention classroom as part of a university affiliated program serving toddlers between the ages of 15 and 36 120

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Manual Signing and Vocalizations

months. This classroom was selected for the study because the staff historically used manual signing and parents of children without disabilities had expressed concern over the detrimental effects of signing on their children's speech. Two groups of children attended the classroom. Group 1 attended 2 half-days each week and included 6 children with disabilities and 5 children without disabilities. Group 2 attended 2 other half-days each week and included 6 children with disabilities and 6 children without disabilities. The classroom staff included an early intervention special educator, a speech-language pathologist, an occupational therapist, and a teacher assistant. The children without disabilities (9 Caucasians, 2 African Americans) had no apparent disabilities and generally communicated verbally with word approximations or single words. Three had previous exposure to signing during the preceding year in an inclusive classroom. The children with disabilities (8 Caucasians, 3 African Americans, 1 Asian American) were eligible for special education services according to Part C of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act of 1997. They had a variety of disabilities and diagnoses including Down syndrome, autism, and cerebral palsy. In terms of overall adaptive functioning, they functioned on average at 14 months below chronological age (range of 9-25 months below chronological age). Based on the Early Intervention Developmental Profile (Rogers & D'Eugenio, 1981), the receptive and expressive communicative skills of the children were below the 20 month level except for 3 children (2 below the 24 month level and 1 below the 31 month level). All but one child imitated motor movements. Most of the children used word approximations to communicate. Four children had previous exposure to manual signing due to participation in an inclusive classroom during the preceding year. Behavior Definitions, Observation System, and Interobserver Agreement Communicative behavior was defined as in previous research (DiCarlo & Banajee, in press) and involved any action directed toward another person in an attempt to gain attention in accordance with the following three categories. First, verbalizations involved any vocal sound directed at another person, including vowel and consonant sounds, word approximations, and true words (any communicative verbalization that included at least one complete word). Second, manual signs were defined as conventional manual signs (e.g., Signed Exact English) or sign approximations (idiosyncratic gestures were not scored as manual signs). Third, voice output communication aide (VOCA) was defined as the activation of an AlphaTalker (available from PrentkeRomich Company) that produced one or more words. Each child in the target activity center was observed

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for 1 minute on a rotating basis using a continuous, 15-s partial interval process (all three types of communicative behavior were scored in an interval). Following an observation of all children, the teacher was observed with the same process for 1 minute. Another observation of each child was then conducted, followed by another observation of the teacher. Observations continued in this manner throughout the 30 minute activity. The teacher's signing was observed to determine if her signing increased during the signing program. Her vocal interactions were also observed to determine if this behavior remained consistent across conditions. Interobserver agreement checks were conducted during 32% of all observations across experimental conditions. Interobserver agreement was determined on an interval-by-interval basis for overall and occurrence agreement using the formula of number of agreements divided by number of agreements plus disagreements multiplied by 1000/0. Overall agreement averaged at least 97% for all behavior categories and occurrence averaged at least 86 % except for signing (68 % for child signing and 73 % for teacher signing). The lower agreement for signing was due to a low frequency of occurrence in certain instances such that a small number of disagreements deflated the average (e.g., for occurrence of child signing, there were no disagreements between observers on 96% of all interobserver agreement checks). During the last month of the study, a second observation system was initiated on a probe basis (three to seven observations per selected activity) to obtain a more precise rate measure of the frequency of the children's signing. All children in the activity center were observed continuously and each manual sign observed was recorded. Reliability checks were conducted during 20% of the probe observations. Interobserver agreement was determined by dividing the smaller rate figure recorded by one observer by the larger rate recorded by the other observer and multiplying by 1000/0. Agreement averaged 950/0. Experimental Conditions Baseline. For Groups 1 and 2, two regular activities in the classroom were targeted. Each activity involved a maximum of 3 children at any point in time and occurred in the art center. One staff member was present for each activity (hereafter referred to as the teacher). One activity was a free play situation (Activity 1) and one was teacher structured (Activity 2). During the free play situation, children were free to enter and leave all classroom centers and to play with materials of their choosing. When children entered the art center, their communicative behavior was observed. The art center consisted of a table and chairs, a marker board, a sand table, and a shelf with material bins that contained play materials. The teacher structured activity involved six activities organized by the teacher that were rotated daily (e.g., drink preparation, putting stickers on pa-

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per). Children entered and exited the teacher structured activity at will. Initially, materials for both activities were arranged in view of the children but out of their reach. The teacher used a systematic approach to facilitate communicative behavior from the children. Specifically, if a child did not communicate a desire for an art material, the teacher provided an item on the table and then paused for a child to communicate a desire for the item. If no communicative attempt was made, the teacher provided a general verbal prompt such as, "I have crayons and paper," while emphasizing key words and pointing to materials. A subsequent verbal prompt was then provided if no communicative attempt was made by the child (e.g., "Who wants crayons and paper?") while pointing to or picking up items in view of the child. If no communicative behavior was made, the teacher provided choices by holding up two items and asking a child which one s/he wanted. The teacher rotated her interactions among the children in the art center so that each child received an interaction every 1-3 minutes. The teacher also modeled appropriate communicative behavior by naming items and activating a VOCA that contained prerecorded messages pertaining to the items. Signing program. Classroom conditions remained the same during the signing program as in baseline (including the use of VOCAs) with the exception of the introduction of the use of signs by the teacher during the art activity. The teacher presented materials and choices as in baseline, with the addition of accompanying her verbalizations with manual signs for key words and concepts (e.g., signing the name of a material or "want"). Experimental Design The experimental design was a multiple baseline across the two groups of children and three activities. The fourth activity served as a continuous control over time.

Results To evaluate effects of a program designed to increase signing among toddlers with disabilities on the frequency of verbalizations among toddlers without disabilities, it was necessary to determine if the program actually increased signing. The teacher's signing increased each time the signing program was implemented (averaging 1 % of observation intervals during baseline conditions and 47 % during the signing program). Her verbal communicative behavior remained consistent across conditions, averaging at least 970/0 per condition. The children's signing was relatively infrequent but nevertheless increased for both groups of toddlers during the program (Figure 1). Baseline averages for the children with and without disabilities for the three activity periods in which the signing program was subsequently implemented were 1 % or less. Dur-

ing the signing program, averages increased somewhat to 5 % and 3 % for Groups 1 and 2. Results of the probe observations on rate of signing during selected activities also indicated increased signing among both groups of children during the program (Figure 2). While the signing program was in effect during Activity 1 for Group 2 (top left panel), signing averaged .17 per minute for the children with disabilities, compared with .06 during the same period of time in Activity 2 while Group 2 was in baseline. For the children without disabilities in Group 2 during the program for Activity 1 (top right panel), signing averaged .17, whereas no signing occurred while these children were in baseline during the same time period with Activity 2. While the program was in effect in Activity 2 for Group 1, signing averaged .23 for the children with disabilities (bottom left panel) and .10 for the children without disabilities (bottom right panel). Although the signing of the toddlers with and without disabilities increased during the signing program, there were no apparent decreases in verbalizations among either group of toddlers (Figure 3). For the children with disabilities, verbalizations averaged 20% during baseline in the target activity periods in which the signing program was later implemented and 24 % during the signing program. The baseline average for the children without disabilities was 26% and 28% during the signing program. No apparent changes occurred for verbalizations among either toddler group during the control activity period. Use of VOCAs by the children was infrequent throughout the study, averaging less than 5 % for both groups. Because the observation process was designed to address the vocal behavior of each group of children as a whole within the naturally occurring routine of the classroom, a detailed analysis of effects of the signing program with individual children was not possible. The children entered and left the activity area at will and the observations rotated across children in the area. Even though observations were conducted for all children over the course of the study, consistent samples of each child's behavior within each experimental period were not obtained. As a very rough estimate of the effects of the signing program, overall increases in signing relative to baseline were observed for 91 % of the children with disabilities and for 70% of the children without disabilities. The average frequency of verbalizations did not change by more than 9 percentage points across experimental conditions for 64 % of the children with disabilities and for 900/0 of the children without disabilities.

Discussion Results suggested that manual signing by staff in an inclusive early intervention classroom did not result in decreases in the verbalizations of toddlers without disabilities. Verbalizations among the toddlers without

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disabilities continued at the overall baseline frequency while the signing program was in effect even though these children began to use manual signing. These results provide some evidence, albeit preliminary, that may help relieve concerns among parents of young children without disabilities that participation in inclusive settings in which manual signing is used will reduce their children's verbalizations. There were also some increases in signing among the children with disabilities during the signing program with no apparent reductive effect on verbalizations. In considering these results, several qualifications should be considered. Most notably, conclusions regarding effects with individual children cannot be made. Also, the investigation targeted only portions of the classroom routine and did not evaluate the effect of

signing during other components of the classroom or outside of the classroom (e.g., at home). The results may not be predictive of other types of inclusive settings in which there are not as many children with disabilities relative to children without disabilities (one half of the children in this classroom had disabilities). Finally, only one aspect of communication was addressed (DiCarlo & Banajee, in press) in terms of seeking attention from an adult, so that effects on other types of communicative functioning remain undetermined. The most appropriate conclusion at this point regarding effects of manual signing by teachers in the inclusive setting should be that within the specific evaluative conditions targeted in this study, there was no evidence of a reductive effect of the signing on the verbalizations of the group of young children without

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disabilities (or children with disabilities). Additional research is warranted to evaluate more specific and perhaps more comprehensive effects of signing for individual children without disabilities, especially if parents suspect that manual signing may be reducing the communicative verbalizations of their children.

References Acredolo, L., & Goodwyn, S. (1996). Baby signs: How to talk with your baby before your baby can talk. Chicago: Contemporary Books. DiCarlo, C. F., & Banajee, M. (in press). Increasing commu-

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nicative initiations among young children with disabilities. Journal of Early Intervention. Noonan, M. J., & McCormick, L. (1993). Early intervention in natural environments: Methods and procedures. Pacific Grove, CA: Brookes/Cole. Rogers, S. J., & D'Eugenio, D. B. (1981). Developmental programming for infants and young children: Assessment and application. In D. S. Schafer & M. S. Moersch (Eds.), Early intervention developmental profile (Rev. ed.) (pp. 23-34). Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. Schwartz, I. S., Garfinkle, A. N., & Bauer, J. (1998). The pic-

ture exchange communication system: Communicative outcomes for young children with disabilities. Topics in Early Childhood Special Education, 18, 144-159. Staub, D., Schwartz, I. S., Gallucci, C., & Peck, C. H. (1994). Four portraits of friendship at an inclusive school. Journal of The Association for Persons with Severe Handicaps, 19, 314325. Article received: April 18, 2000 Final acceptance: October 16,2000 Editor in charge: Hyun-Sook Park

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