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Biomedical subjects

J D Bonvillian

Publications and source records attributed to J D Bonvillian.

11 recordsLinked to original sources
PubMed1985

Sign language, pantomime, and gestural processing in aphasic persons: a review.

Many aphasic individuals who fail to reacquire spoken language skills may retain the ability to acquire aspects of a manual communication system. This conclusion is reached after reviewing the results of studies of pantomime recognition and production, spontaneous gestural production, and manual language training in a wide range of aphasic subjects. Overall, the aphasic subjects appeared to be less impaired in their visuomotor processing than in their auditory-vocal processing. The results, however, are not definitive enough to resolve the long-standing debate as to whether or not a central symbolic deficit is present in aphasia.

Aphasia↗
PubMed1984

The role of inconicity in early sign language acquisition.

A longitudinal study of sign language acquisition was conducted with 13 very young children (median age 10 months at outset of study) of deaf parents. The children's sign language lexicons were examined for their percentages of iconic signs at two early stages of vocabulary development. Iconic signs are those that clearly resemble the action, object, or characteristic they represent. Analysis of the subjects' vocabularies revealed that iconic signs comprised 30.8% of the first 10 signs they acquired. At age 18 months, the proportion of iconic signs was found to be 33.7%. The finding that a majority of signs in the subjects' early vocabularies were not iconic suggests that the role of iconicity in young children's acquisition of signs may have been overrated by some investigators, and that other formational features may be of greater importance in influencing young children's ability to acquire signs.

Child Language↗
PubMed1983

Effects of signability and imagery on word recall of deaf and hearing students.

This study examined 40 deaf and 20 hearing students' free recall of visually presented words varied systematically with respect to signability (i.e., words that could be expressed by a single sign) and visual imagery. Half of the deaf subjects had deaf parents, while the other half had hearing parents. For deaf students, recall was better for words that had sign-language equivalents and high-imagery values. For the hearing students, recall was better for words with high-imagery values, but there was no effect of signability. Over-all, the hearing students recalled significantly more words than the deaf students in both immediate and delayed free-recall conditions. In immediate recall, deaf students with deaf parents reported using a sign-language coding strategy more frequently and recalled more words correctly than deaf students with hearing parents. Serial-position curves indicated several differences in patterns of recall among the groups. These results underline the importance of sign language in the memory and recall of deaf persons.

Adolescent↗
PubMed1983

Developmental milestones: sign language acquisition and motor development.

The sign language and motor development of 11 young children of deaf parents were studied across a 16-month period. The subjects showed accelerated early language development producing, on the average, their first recognizable sign at 8.5 months, their tenth sign at 13.2 months, and their first sign combination at 17.0 months. In contrast, children learning to speak typically do not attain the equivalent spoken language milestones until 2-3 months later. The structure and content of the subjects' 50-sign vocabularies closely resembled those for children at the same stage in previously published studies of spoken language acquisition. The pattern of synchrony between motor and language development previously reported by investigators of children learning to speak was found not to apply to the population of the present study: most of the subjects learning to sign did not slow down in their rate of language acquisition after achieving a new motor milestone, but rather continued to show a gradual increase in the size of their sign language vocabularies.

Child Development↗
PubMed1982

Handedness patterns in deaf persons.

The handedness patterns of 226 deaf high-school and college students were compared to those of 210 college students with normal hearing. Both groups evidenced many more right-handed than left-handed members, as determined by responses to a hand preference questionnaire and performance on an activity test battery. There was, however, a significantly higher incidence of left-handedness among the deaf subjects than among the hearing. Moreover, the left-handed deaf students were found to be less likely to have deaf relatives, and to have been introduced to sign language later in their development than the deaf student population as a whole. These findings were interpreted as showing that age of acquisition of language was related to the development of handedness patterns, whereas auditory processing experience probably was not.

Auditory Perception↗
PubMed1981

Sign language and autism.

Research findings and issues in teaching sign language to nonspeaking autistic children are reviewed. Data on over 100 children indicate that nearly all autistic children learn receptive and expressive signs, and many learn to combine signs. These children also exhibit marked improvement in adaptive behaviors. Speech skills are acquired by fewer children and may be developed through simultaneous speech and sign training. Possible explanations for these results are given, together with suggestions for future research and data collection. Recommended innovations include exposure to fluent signers and training in discourse and code-switching. Different sign language teaching methods need to be investigated more fully, including emphasis on training sign language within the children's total environment and with greater staff and parental participation.

Adolescent↗
PubMed1976

Sign language acquisition in a mute autistic boy.

A mute autistic boy learned to communicate extensively through American Sign Language. Over a six-month period he produced many spontaneous signs and sign combinations, and analyses of child's sign combinations indicated the presence of a full range of semantic relations. Further evidence of conceptual progress was provided by the child's increased score on the Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test. In addition, parents' and teacher's reports indicated that the child's social behavior improved. The extent of the boy's linguistic progress and associated improvement in social behavior markedly exceeds that usually reported for mute autistic children.

Autistic Disorder↗