To contribute to increasing the quality and quantity of communication between staff and adults with intellectual disabilities, training was undertaken to enhance the awareness and knowledge of signing as a method of communication. Multidisciplinary team members, residential and day centre staff were trained to use 20 core signs. Training methods…

Signs were used successfully with a blind 10-year-old autistic girl. After eight months of training, she was able to acquire a functional sign vocabulary relying primarily on the tactile-kinesthetic and the auditory modalities. This newly acquired skill had a beneficial impact on the child's general functioning. (Author)

Evaluation of a program which taught six severely mentally retarded individuals (ages 8-25) to sign interactively with each other found participants showed increased signing skills in a training play situation, generalized use of these skills in a second play situation, and maintained the trained skills over a 2 to 4 month period. (Author/DB)

The mother of a young head injured nonverbal child describes ways used to increase the child's communicative ability including gestures, sign language, and communication boards. (DB)

Techniques have been developed for teaching severely/profoundly retarded children to comprehend the names of everyday objects. (PHR)

A within-subject multiple baseline design was used to teach a young girl with severe disabilities six target signs that were functionally equivalent to existing behaviors (e.g., leading, reaching). Teaching occurred only in the presence of behavioral indication by the subject. Results showed successful acquisition and discriminating use of the six…

Reviews interventions to help children who are deaf-blind to acquire and use communication skills. Focuses on children whose hearing and vision loss preclude traditional methods of communication training. Considers approaches from initial motor-based contacts with the outside environment to learning formal signs or the use of assistive technology.…

Twenty-one nonverbal autistic children, 4- to 9-years-old, with language ages of 4- to 24-months, participated in the communication learning program from 1 to 3 years. Simultaneous verbal and manual signs were chosen as the communications mode. The children initially displayed infrequent, unrecognizable vocalizations (Screeches, or vocal…

Language intervention approaches were built into a residential environment for 13 women with severe mental retardation. Two residents were assigned to an intensive signing program, two to an "Intro-talker and signing" group, and the remaining residents to various comparison-intervention and comparison groups. Increases in positive communicative…

Four adults with moderate/severe disabilities were taught to request objects by using the manual signs "want" or "please" plus an object label sign, within the context of familiar activities in which needed objects were missing. All participants acquired a generic requesting response, and three acquired an explicit requesting…

Seventeen speech/language pathologists were surveyed concerning reasons for and success of sign language intervention with 118 severely/profoundly mentally retarded students. Though sign language was part of the educational program for approximately one quarter of the students, results suggested that sign language was not an effective…

Verbal prompts, modeling, physical guidance, positive reinforcement, fading, and chaining procedures were used to teach two nonverbal individuals (one severely and one moderately mentally retarded) an interactive signing dialogue in a naturalistic setting. Although clients learned to use signed communication, extensive training was required and…

Research findings and descriptive articles pertaining to media, materials, and technology (MMT) which provide access to education of deaf and hard of hearing children from early childhood through eighth grade are reviewed and summarized. An introduction discusses the purpose and goal of the study; the target population; characteristics of deaf and…