Off-campus UNL users: To download campus access dissertations, please use the following link to log into our proxy server with your NU ID and password. When you are done browsing please remember to return to this page and log out.
Non-UNL users: Please talk to your librarian about requesting this dissertation through interlibrary loan.
Learning graphic symbols: The role of visual cues in interaction
Abstract
Children with severely limited speech are at risk for developing language in predictable ways. Although graphic symbols offer a means of learning language until they can read, very little is known about how children learn words in both spoken and graphic form. One mechanism known to increase children's ability to learn new words is joint attention. Joint attention is achieved when both child and adult simultaneously attend to the same thing. During social interactions, both adults and children adjust their behavior to achieve joint attention by trying to determine their partner's point of reference. Very young children monitor and use cues in adults' behavior to determine their attentional focus when it differs from their own, but only in limited ways. Adults must use different strategies to regulate joint attention in spoken and visual languages. Supportive cues from visual languages, such as American Sign Language, for maintaining joint attention may suit graphic symbol learning. This research investigates how children use visual cues in social interaction to learn words and graphic symbols. Twenty-two children aged three to ten with severe speech and communication disorders saw unfamiliar toys labeled with unfamiliar words and graphic symbols. First the experimenter pointed only to the symbol during labeling, but in the second condition an explicit pointing cue was provided to visually link the object to the graphic symbol. Results of comprehension testing indicate that pointing from object to graphic symbol was associated with learning the graphic symbol meaning whereas pointing only to the symbol was not. Children learned spoken labels in both conditions. The time children spent looking at graphic symbols in response to pointing was unrelated to learning. Children's ability to learn graphic symbols was unrelated to receptive vocabulary or graphic symbol experience. These data suggest that children are sensitive to cues in interaction but vary in their use of cues to learn graphic symbols. Maintaining joint attention during interaction using pointing cues may best facilitate language growth by these children.
Subject Area
Special education|Speech therapy
Recommended Citation
Hunt-Berg, Mary Margaret, "Learning graphic symbols: The role of visual cues in interaction" (1996). ETD collection for University of Nebraska-Lincoln. AAI9703782.
https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/dissertations/AAI9703782