Nonverbal Communication with Children with Disabilities
Imagine not being able to verbalize what you needed or wanted. How would that make you feel? Helpless, frustrated, sad; these are all examples of how children with disabilities that cause them to be nonverbal or strongly with communication feel on a daily bases. This is why it is so important for these children to use there nonverbal communication skills to try and communicate there needs and for people that work with them to be able to understand them.
Some of the main ways we see children with disabilities communicate nonverbally is by using gestures, facial expressions, eye gazing and even sometimes signs. Gestures and signs are normally the easiest to pick up on since it involves them point at exactly what they want or using sign language to communicate. Even though they are the easiest for use to understand they aren 't always the way that these children with disabilities will communicate or express themselves. For example is a child has not learned sign language and doesn 't understand the concept or point at something or doing some kind of gesture to get what they want they may express what they want by starring at something or making different facial expressions to let you know weather or no thats what they wanted.
Nonverbal Communication: Uses for Children with Autism
The use of gestures among children with autism is common but it is also one of the many ways that you can identify if they are on the spectrum. According to Watson, Crais, Baranek, Dykstra, and Wilson (2013) , the different uses of gestures during infancy can help start the process of screening for autism, assessing and intervention earlier. The sample used for this experiment was child at ei...
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...so In this experiment they showed how both verbal and nonverbal communication can be used at the same time. This part of the experiment is where the mistakes started to happen. The children with autism had a lower ability to use gestures that related to whet they are saying. This makes it very difficult to understand for the receiver since you are getting to different messages at the same Time. For this experiment they had a sample group of children with and without autism from age 6-12 (So, Lui, Wong, and Sit, 2015).
Overall Gestures use with children with autism is very common and help them communicate and be identified. Since these gestures give them a form of communication that either is in addition to another form of communication or by its self, it gives them the ability to communicate in someway that is helpful to them and for the receiver in most situations
Robison states repeatedly that those with ASD have a very hard time reading social cues including body language. Nonverbal communication such as body language and tone of voice make up 93% of communication according to Yaffe. Is it possible for those with ASD to learn to understand nonverbal communication, and use these skills to better overall communication? If a person can learn the symptoms to an illness and be able to diagnosis it can a person with ASD learn the “symptoms” to nonverbal
In this article, “The Deaf Body in Public Space,” Rachel Kolb explains how interacting with people who do not understand sign language could be difficult. With her hearing disability she struggled to communicate with her peers. Kolb further explains the different situations she has encountered with people and comments that are made with first intercommunications. Going further she also mentions how she struggles with two languages and two modes of communication.
Incidental teaching focuses on child-initiated interactions. (Hall, 2013) Incidental teaching is used to increase skills of individuals with autism spectrum disorders. (Hall, 2013) A study done by Hart and Risley (1975) looked at the incidental teaching process used at the preschool age to aide in teaching language. Incidental teaching has been the most frequent strategy that has been used to teach language. When using incidental teaching a child’s request may be verbal or nonverbal. Examples include reaching for an object that is out of one’s reach, requesting food or a toy or calling an adult’s name. There is a series of decisions that an adult can use to respond to the child’s request. These choices include: if the occasion should be used for incidental teaching: if so then a choice regarding the language behavior that is obtained from the child, and then a choice has to be made concerning the cue that will be used to initiate instruction, the cur could be focus of attention by itself, or in addition to the focused attention a verbal cue as well. If the individual does not respond to the cue, then a choice concerning the degree of prompt to be used, the “fullest degree: a request for imitation; medium degree: a request for partial imitation, or minimal degree: a request for the terminal language behavior.” (Hart & Risley, 1975) This study was performed on boys and girls between the ages of four years old to five years old. The baseline procedures ensured that the children had a variety of vocabulary for use in sentences. The sentences that they were taught was “I want x so I can y.” The second step of the procedure was the use of incidental teaching of compound sentences directed to teachers. After thirty-six days of school, the incidental teaching began to occur when the children needed assistance in trying to get different preschool materials.
For example, our text describes two symptoms of ASD; 1. social communications and interactions 2. and limited patterns of repetitive behavior, interests, and or activities. This was all evident in the “Neurotypical” documentary. For example, Nicholas was unable to interact with girls or form relationships he believes he has nothing in common with them. Wolf suggested that autistic children are good at mimicking others and that nonverbal cues are important to watch out for. Violet, on the other hand, has a habit of repeating behaviors; she will repeat anything her parents say. In the text it also says severity of language problems vary child to child. In Violets case she does not fall under the mute category but instead she is able to speak in a few words, cry, and even laugh. Our text introduces the term for repetitive speech, echolalia. Violet tends to repeat a word or words her parents say either right away when she hears it or later
... can be difficult for a child with autism to initiate conversation on her own, by following your child’s lead and responding to what she does, you are encouraging further interaction. You can also help by encouraging friendships between your child with ASD and other children”
When we think of communication, we tend to think of speech, but there is a lot more to it than verbal communication. Gesturing, tone of voice and facial expressions are all parts of communication that are not verbal. We may not even always realize how much of communication is non-verbal, because we normally don’t think about it that way. However, it would be nearly impossible to communicate without non-verbal communication.
Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) is a complex developmental disorder that affects a person’s social interaction and communication. This disorder is mainly characterized by having difficulty with social interaction, communication, and having restricted behaviors. Difficulty with social interaction means someone will struggle to communicate their feelings/emotions, understand how others feel or think, develop peer relationships, and understand nonverbal behaviors (eye gaze, facial expressions, etc). Difficulty with communication will vary among the individual. Some individuals will develop expressive language, while others will not. The speech of those that do develop expressive language will often be repetitive, rote, and lack meaning. They may struggle with turn taking in conversation and topic maintenance. Those individuals who do not develop expressive language typically do not use other modalities to communicate, like pointing or gestures. The last characteristic of the autistic spectrum disorder is having repetitive behaviors or activities. Typically children on the spectrum will play with their toys in an unusual manner, or may prefer only one toy, movie, or activity. Changes in daily schedule are hard for children on the spectrum to adapt to; usually these children like the same daily schedule. Bass, Duchowny, and Llabre (2009) state, “It is possible that animal-assisted activities provide a multisensory environment that will prove beneficial to children with profound social and communication deficits.”
As a high school student, I worked with a thirteen-year-old boy named Ricky as a sign language tutor. Ricky had autism and did not acquire speech other than the word “ma”. A high population of children with autism does not acquire speech, and intervention is needed. Other methods of intervention exist, but teaching signs is one of the most useful ways of giving nonverbal children the power of communication. Although researchers often seek to solve problems, I approach this topic from the perspective of a teacher. Teachers must grapple with educating a higher percentage of children with communicative challenges due to a growing diagnosis of autism. Special education policy must work to support the needs of these students while giving teachers opportunities to practice appropriate interventions. The success of sign language instruction will vary among children, but invested parents and teachers may be able to help a child realize his or her communicative potential.
If a person's hearing or sight is impaired, body language and tone of voice will become more important.
Luiselli, James K. "Verbal Language and Communication." Teaching and Behavior Support for Children and Adults with Autism Spectrum Disorder: A Practitioner's Guide. New York: Oxford UP, 2011. Print.
Van der Meer, L., Kagohara, D., Achmadi, D., O'Reilly, M., Lancioni, G. E., Sutherland, D., & Sigafoos, J. (2012). Speech-generating devices versus manual signing for children with developmental disabilities. Research in Developmental Disabilities, 33(5), 1658-1669. doi: 10.1016/j.ridd.2012.04.004
65 children, 52 boys and 13 girls who were not diagnosed with autism, from 3 different clinics, were used for this study. They were under 3 years of age, they were referred to the clinics due to social and/or language issues, and their parents provided informed consent. The children had also previously had 2 independent diagnostic evaluations. A second group of 37 children were used from this sample, th...
People with autism can have problems understanding speech and language. Because of their defects they don’t feel the need to communicate and may very well not have any understanding of how other people might respond to a communicated message. Messages may also have an emotional component. Comprehension of speech and language is normally done through sound. This requires paying close attention to the sound(s) then being able to transfer them in terms of words then being able to understand the words intended meanings.
Autism is characterized as a developmental disorder that is seen in children by the age of three years old. Autism affects the brains normal, natural development, and causes many impairments. The major impairments that affect an individual are reciprocal socialization, Qualitative impairment in communication, and repetitive or unusual behavior. Signs of Autism can be seen in early infanthood, with proper awareness and resources. An infant child can appear to be adverse to eye contact early on. Some signs in early infancy appear as being indifferent to affection and physical contact. When spoken to, they can appear to be deaf or ignoring the parent or caregiver. Noticing the early red flags of Autism can provide an early intervention and give the child the best chance at learning to tolerate their environment. Children around three years old will display certain signs and symptoms.
prefers to utilize the American Sign Language (ASL) for communication. According to Deaf & hard of hearing – Deaf culture fact sheet, (2015) “ASL has been passed on from one generation to the next in schools” and that “when ASL was not allowed in classrooms Deaf staff and peers secretly used this language to communicate” therefore demonstrating its significance in the Deaf culture. As already stated vision is a strong element in communication within the Deaf culture and therefore norms such as eye contact are very important. Body language and facials expressions can be easily read by a deaf individual thereby providing additional information while communicating. In order to get the attention of the other person a deaf individual utilizes hand waving something which Deaf & hard of hearing – Deaf Culture fact sheet, (2015) states that “ it is most