The great baby signing debate

‘Baby signing’ is an augmentative communication approach that has been developed for use with hearing preverbal infants. It involves teaching babies key word signing that they can use to communicate before they can talk. A baby signing movement is currently sweeping the country. Parents of infants everywhere are reading about the benefits of teaching ‘sign’ to their children and many are embracing this wholeheartedly. Numerous companies have been set up to promote and sell baby signing materials. All claim immense benefits to be had including facilitating spoken language development, reducing tantrums and even increasing a child’s intelligence

Don't look now... I'm trying to think

What was the name of your first headteacher? Stop and think for a while... did you just look to the heavens for the answer? During difficult cognitive activity, for example remembering information, thinking of an answer to a question, planning what we are going to say, and speaking, we often close our eyes, look up at the sky, or look away from the person we are in conversation with. Adults are very good at switching off from environmental stimulation (both live faces and other sorts of visual display) in order to concentrate better. Until recently we knew very little about whether children use gaze aversion in a similar way. This is a potentially important omission, since the efficiency with which children process information influences many aspects of their development, including school progress. In this article I'll describe what our research team at stirling has been doing to investigate children's gaze aversion, including past and current work. children's patterns of gaze promise to yield important cues to their thinking, concentration and mental processing that will be useful to paretns, teachers, psychologists and anyone engaged in assessing children's knowledge and development

The development of conversational and communication skills

This thesis investigates the development of children's conversational and communication skills. This is done by investigating both communicative process and outcome in two communication media: face-to-face interaction and audio-only interaction. Communicative outcome is objectively measured by assessing accuracy of performance of communication tasks. A multi-level approach to the assessment of communicative process is taken. Non-verbal aspects of process which are investigated are gaze and gesture. Verbal aspects of process range from global linguistic assessments such as length of conversational turn, to a detailed coding of utterance function according to Conversational Games analysis. The results show that children of 6 years and less do not adapt to the loss of visual signals in audio-only communication, and their performance suffers. Both the structure of children's dialogues and their use of visual signals were found to differ from that of adults. It is concluded that both verbal and non-verbal communication strategies develop into adulthood. Successful integration of these different aspects of communication is central to being an effective communicator

The great baby signing debate: academia meets public interest

‘Baby signing’ is an augmentative communication approach that has been developed for use with hearing preverbal infants. It involves teaching babies key word signing that they can use to communicate before they can talk. A baby signing movement is currently sweeping the country. Parents of infants everywhere are reading about the benefits of teaching ‘sign’ to their children and many are embracing this wholeheartedly. Numerous companies have been set up to promote and sell baby signing materials. All claim immense benefits to be had including facilitating spoken language development, reducing tantrums and even increasing a child’s intelligence

Helping children think: Gaze aversion and teaching

Looking away from an interlocutor's face during demanding cognitive activity can help adults answer challenging arithmetic and verbal-reasoning questions (Glenberg, Schroeder, & Robertson, 1998). However, such `gaze aversion' (GA) is poorly applied by 5-year-old school children (Doherty-Sneddon, Bruce, Bonner, Longbotham, & Doyle, 2002). In Experiment 1 we trained ten 5-year-old children to use GA while thinking about answers to questions. This trained group performed significantly better on challenging questions compared with 10 controls given no GA training. In Experiment 2 we found significant and monotonic age-related increments in spontaneous use of GA across three cohorts of ten 5-year-old school children (mean ages: 5;02, 5;06 and 5;08). Teaching and encouraging GA during challenging cognitive activity promises to be invaluable in promoting learning, particularly during early primary years

Gaze Aversion During Children's Transient Knowledge and Learning

Looking away from an interlocutor’s face during demanding cognitive activity can help adults and children answer challenging mental arithmetic and verbal-reasoning questions (Glenberg, Schroeder, & Robertson, 1998; Phelps, Doherty-Sneddon, & Warnock, 2006). While such “gaze aversion” (GA) is used far less by 5-year old school children, its use increases dramatically during the first years of primary education, reaching adult levels by 8-years of age (Doherty-Sneddon, Bruce, Bonner, Longbotham, & Doyle, 2002). Furthermore GA increases with increasing mental demands, with high levels signalling that an individual finds material being discussed challenging but remains engaged with it (Doherty-Sneddon et al., 2002; Doherty-Sneddon & Phelps, 2006). In the current study we investigate whether patterns of gaze and gaze aversion during children’s explanations can predict when they are in states of transient knowledge (Karmiloff-Smith 1992; Goldin-Meadow, Kim, & Singer, 1999). In Study 1, fifty-nine 6-year-olds took part and completed a “Time Task” along with periodic teaching intervention to improve their comprehension of telling the time. Some children improved immediately, whereas others did so more gradually. The gradual improvers showed the highest levels of GA, particularly when they were at an intermediate level of performance. In Study 2, thirty-three 6-year-old children completed a balance beam task (Pine & Messer, 2000). Children who improved the representational level of their explanations (Karmiloff-Smith, 1992) of this task with training used more GA than those who did not. Practical implications for teaching and for recognizing transient knowledge states are discussed

Face processing in Williams Syndrome and autism

Individuals with Williams syndrome (WS) have been characterised as hyper-sociable, showing an extreme compulsion to engage in communication with other people, whilst the opposite has been cited regarding autism. The most important social cue in our environment is the human face, which must be successfully recognised and interpreted for communicative signals. Although clear differences are apparent in social skills, individuals with WS and autism have been described as showing similarly atypical face processing styles. The present research addressed issues of face perception in Williams syndrome and autism to gain further insights into social abilities of individuals with these developmental disorders. Importantly, the research was grounded in typical face perception methods. The investigation began with a large-scale exploration of face skills, probing identity, eye gaze, expressions of emotion and lip reading to ask how these two disorders uniquely impact upon performance. Participants with WS and autism could be dissociated from those with general developmental delay and from each other primarily on the basis of eye gaze ability. Participants with WS showed strong eye gaze abilities whilst participants with autism had extreme difficulties. Although interpretation of expressions of emotion also showed a difference between groups, autism and WS did not uniquely impact upon the processing of identity or lip reading. The exploration also allowed the consideration of models of face perception; characterised by a typical modular structure in WS but a lack of modularity in autism. The second line of inquiry considered identity processing and firstly asked whether participants were more accurate at matching faces from internal or external features. Participants with WS showed an atypical use of internal features for matching unfamiliar faces, which may be linked to an atypical interaction style and exaggerated interest in unfamiliar people. Participants with autism used the same strategy to match faces of familiar and unfamiliar people and hence familiarity did not impact upon processing style. Subsequent chapters probed feature salience (eyes .v. mouth) and structural encoding. Across paradigms typically developing participants and those with WS showed greater accuracy using the eye than mouth region, a pattern not evident in autism. Regarding structural encoding, individuals with WS showed use of configural cues under the task demands implemented in this thesis, where individuals with autism were only able to interpret featural cues. Previous evidence of similar face processing styles in WS and autism were not supported. Taken together the findings provide further insights into face perception and social functioning in WS and autism. The research used the same participants across paradigms, considered level of functioning on the autistic spectrum and included investigations of WS and autism in the same research programme. Additional to the main experimental studies, pilot data is provided to open a new line of investigation into physiological arousal associated with holding eye contact in WS. Therefore, on the basis of the experiments conducted here, a number of suggestions are made to carry the research forward in future investigations. Throughout the thesis as a whole, comparisons are made between individuals with WS and autism that further our understanding of the links between face processing and social expertise.EThOS - Electronic Theses Online ServiceESRCGBUnited Kingdo

Development of gaze aversion: qualitiative changes over the early school years

Looking away from an interlocutors’ face during demanding cognitive activity can help adults and children answer challenging mental arithmetic and verbal-reasoning questions (Glenberg, Schroeder, & Robertson, 1998; Phelps, Doherty-Sneddon & Warnock, in press). Whilst such ‘gaze aversion’ (GA) is used far less by 5-year old school children, its use increases dramatically during the first years of primary education, reaching adult levels by 8-years of age (Doherty-Sneddon, Bruce, Bonner, Longbotham, & Doyle, 2002). The current study investigates whether developmental changes also occur in a qualitative aspect of GA - the direction of movement involved in GA shifts. Video data from 18 5-year-olds and 19 8-year-olds answering verbal and arithmetic questions were analysed for direction of GA. We found very different profiles of direction of GA across the two ages: whilst the 5-year-olds used predominantly rapid multi-directional ‘flicking’ movements and some sustained left lateral movements, the 8-year-olds used predominantly sustained rightward movements. It is concluded that, as well as quantitative increases in the use of GA across these age groups, there are concomitant qualitative changes in the nature of GA shifts. A model of human attention in face-to-face interaction is discussed as are implications for the assessment of children’s learning and development

Visual signals and children's communication: negative effects on task outcome

Previous research has found that young children fail to adapt to audio-only interaction (e.g. Doherty-Sneddon & Kent, 1996), and perform difficult communication tasks better face-to-face. In this new study, children aged 6- and 10 year-olds were compared in face-to-face and audio-only interaction. A problem-solving communication task involving description of abstract stimuli was employed. When describing the abstract stimuli both groups of children showed evidence of face-to-face interference rather than facilitation. It is concluded that, contrary to previous research, for some communication tasks access to visual signals (such as facial expression and eye gaze) may hinder rather than help children’s communication

Cognitive demands of face monitoring: Evidence for visuospatial overload

Young children perform difficult communication tasks better face to face than when they cannot see one another (e.g., Doherty-Sneddon & Kent, 1996). However, in recent studies, it was found that children aged 6 and 10 years, describing abstract shapes, showed evidence of face-to-face interference rather than facilitation. For some communication tasks, access to visual signals (such as facial expression and eye gaze) may hinder rather than help children’s communication. In new research we have pursued this interference effect. Five studies are described with adults and 10- and 6-year-old participants. It was found that looking at a face interfered with children’s abilities to listen to descriptions of abstract shapes. Children also performed visuospatial memory tasks worse when they looked at someone’s face prior to responding than when they looked at a visuospatial pattern or at the floor. It was concluded that performance on certain tasks was hindered by monitoring another person’s face. It is suggested that processing of visual communication signals shares certain processing resources with the processing of other visuospatial information