Thompson, R.H., Cotnoir-Bichelman, N.M., McKerchar, P.M., Tate, T.L., & Dancho, K.A. (2007). Enhancing early communication through infant sign training. Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis, 40, 15-23.
Existing research suggests that there may be benefits to teaching signing to hearing infants who have not yet developed vocal communication. In this study, each of 4 infants ranging in age from 6 to 10 months was taught a simple sign using delayed prompting and reinforcement. In addition, Experiment 1 showed that 2 children independently signed in a variety of novel stimulus conditions (e.g., in a classroom, with father) after participating in sign training under controlled experimental conditions. In Experiment 2, crying and whining were replaced with signing when sign training was implemented in combination with extinction.
Sunday, October 14, 2007
Thompson, R.H. et. al. (2007). Enhancing early communication through sign
Are the conclusions of this article supported by its data?
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
5 comments:
The data from this article is interesting and shows potential for future studies to be done, but the results were not strongly supported by the data. The main reason for this is the small sample size (both experiments had only two children), and also the variance of the factors (each child was taught a different sign). Also, the children were all very different, nothing was selected randomly, and nobody was blinded. The interobserver agreement lended some additional credibility, but still could have added a lot of bias.
This study simple shows that it is possible to teach an infant how to use a sign/gesture within a meaningful context. It does investigate - due to a low number of subjects and othe issues - whether or not the introduction of these signs actually faciltiated language growth or language acquisition at an earlier age. More longitudinal studies would need to be done to investigate this hypothesis.
This article showed some good case studies that it is possible to teach children how to sign a single sign. It did not show that teaching signs helps develop language or communication skills.
Thompson et al. were successful at demonstrating that signs may be acquired by infants, but the study seemed to lack a functional aspect. I am not convinced after reading this study that signing to infants helps language development overall.
This article presents 2 very interesting concepts and more research would be beneficial, but for many reasons, I feel that the results of the data were not supported. The sample sizes were very small. I felt that the study was almost more of a collection of case studies than a controlled research article.
Post a Comment