101. Manual signing in adults with intellectual disability: influence of sign characteristics on functional sign vocabulary
- Author
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Meuris, Kristien, Maes, Bea, De Meyer, Anne-Marie, and Zink, Inge
- Subjects
Language skills -- Demographic aspects -- Health aspects ,Mental retardation -- Demographic aspects ,Health - Abstract
Purpose: The purpose of this study was to investigate the influence of sign characteristics in a key word signing (KWS) system on the functional use of those signs by adults with intellectual disability (ID). Method: All 507 signs from a Flemish KWS system were characterized in terms of phonological, iconic, and referential characteristics. Phonological and referential characteristics were assigned to the signs by speech-language pathologists. The iconicity (i.e., transparency, guessing the meaning of the sign; and translucency, rating on a 6-point scale) of the signs were tested in 467 students. Sign functionality was studied in 119 adults with ID (mean mental age of 50.54 months) by means of a questionnaire, filled out by a support worker. Results: A generalized linear model with a negative binomial distribution (with log-link) showed that semantic category was the factor with the strongest influence on sign functionality, with grammatical class, referential concreteness, and translucency also playing a part. No sign phonological characteristics were found to be of significant influence on sign use. Conclusion: The meaning of a sign is the most important factor regarding its functionality (i.e., whether a sign is used in everyday communication). Phonological characteristics seem only of minor importance. Key Words: adults, intellectual disability, augmentative and alternative communication, manual signing, key word signing, Manual signing has been used for a long time to support the communication of people with intellectual disability (ID) and has become more common since the 1970s. Most applications of [...]
- Published
- 2014
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