Results

1. Effects of a Naturalistic Sign Intervention on Expressive Language of Toddlers with Down Syndrome Courtney Wright, Ann Kaiser, Dawn Reikowsky, Megan Roberts Department of Special Education, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, TN • Procedures • Baseline: • Adult directed play with toys. • Moderately responsive • No EMT/JASPER strategies used • No signs modeled • Intervention: • 20 sessions, 20-30 minutes • Child directed play with toys • Fully responsive • All EMT/JASPER strategies used • Signs modeled with >90% of spoken words • Generalization: • 10 minutes of standardized set of toys and books • Conducted every 5 sessions • At home with untrained parent • Introduction • Children with DS have specific phenotypic strengths and weaknesses based on their diagnosis (Chapman & Hesketh, 2000; Kumin, 1996; Roberts, Price, & Malkin, 2007; Stoel-Gammon, 2001). • Two appropriate interventions: • Naturalistic interventions target strengths in social engagement (Adamson, Bakeman, Deckner, & Romski, 2009) and weaknesses in requesting (Mundy, Sigman, Kasari, & Yirmiya, 1988), persistence (Kasari & Freeman, 2001), and object play (Adamson, et al., 2009). • Sign language interventions target strengths in gesturing (Caselli et al., 1998; Franco & Wishart, 1995) and weaknesses infusing symbols into joint engagement (Adamson et al., 2009). • Purpose • Does EMT/JASPER Words + Signs increase use of expressive signs and spoken communication in young children with DS? • Do children generalize newly learned words and signs to use with their parents at home? • Participants • Observational Measures • Twenty minutes video recorded and coded • Spontaneous, imitated, and prompted • If a child used a sign and a word simultaneously, both the word and sign were tallied. • Reliability was coded for 30% of sessions and averaged 91% (SD=.19, range=0-100, 87% sessions over 80%) • Results • Discussion • New application of EMT to sign mode • Children still use words when learning to sign • Children learned between 10 and 21 signs and generalized their use to untrained partner at home • Future research • Replicate findings in group and single subject designs • Expand target words, environments partners • Explore EMT/JASPER with other AAC modes • Continue developing interventions targeting strengths and weaknesses of young children with DS Cumulative Words & Signs Used Spontaneously Frequency of Total Words and Spontaneous Novel Words Frequency of Total Signs and Spontaneous Novel Signs During baseline, all children used fewer than five signs. Upon introducing the intervention, use of signs increased to varying degrees ranging from 0-78 signs. Spontaneous number of different words increased for 3 of the 4 participants. Children generalized their skills to untrained parents. Three of the four participants used zero words during baseline sessions. Erin said five (three unique) words. After the introduction of the intervention, each participant demonstrated different patterns of word usage. Participants used between zero and 32 total words during intervention sessions. A word or sign was included when the child used it spontaneously during a single session. Participants used few spontaneous words or signs during baseline. All children acquired words and signs throughout intervention, although at different rates. Children learned more signs than words.