beyond the single sign: the significance of sign order in a matrix-based approach to teaching...

MENTAL HANDICAP RESEARCH, 1990; 3:2, 161 - 178 0 BlMH Publications

161

Beyond the single sign: the significance of sign order in a matrix-based approach to teaching productive sign combinations

Paul Light*, Julia Watson" *, Bob Remington

Department of Psychology, University of Southampton, Southampton SO9 5NH

Submitted March 7 989 Revision accepted November 7 989

ABSTRACT The authors report two experimental studies which looked at the effects of a matrix training procedure designed to teach children with mental handicaps to use two-sign combinations. Matrix training involves teaching a specific subset of sign combinations which correspond to the overlapping diagonal cells in a matrix of possible sign combinations. Each study used a matrix of object and location combinations.

In the first study, two children were successfully taught to make correct two-sign combinations, following the teacher's placement of an object in a location. The skill was acquired as a generalised response class, but neither child fully acquired the ability to use sign order to convey meaning.

The second experiment showed that only two of four children, who used signs in combination in the natural environment, were sensitive to the linguistic information carried by sign order. An attempt was made to teach the meaning of sign order to the children who were not sensitive to it. A matrix of sign combinations was used, in which the signs functioning as objects could be transposed with those which functioned as locations. These procedures were not successful.

The results are discussed with respect to the complex relationships between sign learning and natural language.

INTRODUCTION There is little doubt that, in recent years, manual signing has made a substantial impact on the ways in which people with mental handicaps are

All correspondence should be addressed to Bob Remington. Reader in Psychology, at the address given above.

"Paul Light is now Professor of Education and Director of the Centre for Human Development and Learning at the School of Education, The Open University. Milton Keynes, M K 7 6AA.

"Julia Watson is now teaching at Heathfield School, Fareham. Hampshire.

162 LIGHT, WATSON, AND REMINGTON

taught to communicate (Kiernan, Reid, and Jones, 1982). Signing has been viewed as either a gateway to speech or a substitute for speech (or as both) by many workers who have advocated its use. Despite this, a predominant focus of early sign teaching has been on the acquisition of a simple signing vocabulary (Walker, 1978). Similarly, much of the research literature has been concerned primarily with the acquisition of single signs (Clarke, Remington, and Light, 1988; Luftig and Lloyd, 1981). Any form of effective linguistic communication - spoken or otherwise - typically involves using a combination of elements to convey a meaning. It might have been expected, therefore, that research would also have focused on ways of teaching people to combine signs in novel ways.

In fact, work of this kind is not frequent. Although researchers have occasionally reported the emergence of multi-sign “sentences” following teaching (Benaroya er al., 1979), some studies lack critical information about how such performances were acquired. Others report extreme variability in outcome. Remington, Watson, and Light (1990), provide a brief review of these papers.

An important question with multi-signing children is whether any sign strings they produce are truly novel recombinations of signs acquired previously, or whether they are functionally inseparable, single “utterances” (Remington and Light, 1983). What is required is a method which allows researchers to observe the development of the skill of combining signs, to check that the combinations produced are genuinely novel, and to link their emergence precisely to a specific teaching input.

An approach of this kind was developed by Karlan er al. (1982). Their strategy was to use an experimental approach to the teaching of a matrix of sign combinations. The matrix elements arrayed vertically corresponded to signs for actions, while signs for objects were arrayed horizontally. (See Table 1 in Remington, Watson, and Light (1990) for illustrative diagram. Similar matrices, with object and location elements, are shown in Table 2 of this paper.)

Each cell of Karlan et al.’s matrix, therefore, marked an action and object combination, such as “turn cup”, or “give paper”. Three children were directly taught the set of overlapping sign combinations corresponding to the stepped diagonal of the matrix (items T 1 -T9). Combinations corresponding to the remaining cells (those marked P) were tested to establish whether the children could then produce correct combinations of signs which they had not been taught directly. Two of the

THE SIGNIFICANCE OF SIGN ORDER 163

children in Karlan et al.’s study did produce novel sign combinations, but a similar study by Romski and Ruder (1984) failed to replicate this success.

Remington, Watson, and Light (1990) report two experiments which may account for this discrepancy. Their data suggest that results resembling those of either Romski and Ruder (1984) or Karlan et al. (1982) can be obtained using the same matrix training procedure, but with children who have different levels of prior linguistic skill. They suggest that successful matrix training almost certainly depends on a pre-existing, expressive signing vocabulary for the elements which are combined to make up items in the cells of the matrix. In their experiment, children who did have established single signing skills could successfully recombine signs to label unfamiliar items with familiar attributes. Children who could already sign “fish”, “car”, “red”, and “green”, for example, who were taught to sign “red-fish”, “red-car”, and “green-fish” in the presence of the corresponding stimuli, could, without any additional training, subsequently sign “green-car” when shown a picture of a green car.’ Their recombination skills also generalised to colour and object signs, which were already in the children’s single sign vocabulary but which had never been used in matrix training.

Despite the evident effectiveness of matrix training in generating novel sign combinations without explicit training, the signs produced do not necessarily follow what would be regarded as a “correct” syntactic order for spoken English. For example, although discouraged by the teaching contingencies used by Remington, Watson, and Light (1990), the combination “car-red” would effectively tact the same picture as the combination “red-car”. The latter would be regarded as more appropriate, but only by specifically English convention. The same cannot be said of the combinations “John hit Mary” and “Mary hit John”, which tact (label) completely different stimuli.

Thus, the issue of sign order is significant to the extent that the dependence of meaning on word order is held by some (Wilson, 1975) to be a key criterion of “true language”. Word order rules are said to be apparent

’ Both naming single objects and labelling objects with multiple attributes are forms of tacting (Skinner, 1957). Tacts are verbal operants (for example, spoken words or signs) of a particular form, occasioned by objects or events in speakers’ or signers’ environments. Children are more likely to use them if they are regularly reinforced by people who use speech or sign language to communicate in the presence of the objects or events.


from the outset in the multi-word construction of infants who develop normally (de Villiers and de Villiers, 1978). The different meanings of pairs of sentences, such as “Mary hit John” and “John hit Mary”, seem to be correctly understood by children as young as two years of age (Bever, 1970). The primary aim of the present study was to establish whether matrix training using signs generated a similar sensitivity to order.

The choice of a training matrix was constrained by two general considerations. First was the desire to work with a simple, two dimensional matrix whose elements were reversible. T o achieve this, an object and location matrix was selected (Table 2a). Training procedures were designed in such a way that children could be taught to tact a teacher’s actions. The teacher’s placement of a pencil in a cup, for example, would set the occasion for the children to sign “pencil-cup”. The locative prepositional relationship (the forming of the prepositional sign indicating the location of one object in relation to the other) did not need to be signed in this context because it was constant throughout the matrix. Second, was the need to take account of the fact that some objects (for example, cups) are generally accepted as receptacles on, or in, which other items (for example, pencils) may be placed. In order to assist early acquisition of the skill of combining signs, the object and location matrix used in training respected these canonical categories. For this reason, however, it was necessary to devise two test matrices (Table 2b, c) of items which did not naturally fall into object or location categories. The purpose of these was to establish whether the training procedure led to a generalised “syntactical” sensitivity to sign order.

EXPERIMENT 1

Method

People studied Two children with severe learning difficulties, Stewart and Tony, were selected to take part in this study. Both could use a range of single signs and had some single word speech, but with poor articulation. Data relating to their chronological age, Merrill-Palmer scores (Stutsman, 193 l), language skills (Reynell, 1977), and aetiology are shown in Table la.

Setting All teaching took place in individual sessions in a quiet room at the children’s school. Two daily 10-20 minute sessions were carried out on weekdays. The


Name Aetiology Age Recognisable speech

Stewart Unknown 9.11 Present

Tony Unknown 4.08 Present

Reynell Reynell expressive receptive

1.11 3.04

1.09 2.07

Merrill- Palmer

Name Aetiology Age Recognisable Reynell Reynell speech expressive receptive

Multi-signers

Robert Unknown 10.04 Present 4.08 4.04

Tina Down’s 12.02 Present 3.07 3.08

Clare Unknown 12.08 Present 2.10 4.02

Susan Unknown 16.09 Present 3.07 6.04

3.05

2.10

M e d l - Palmer

4.01

3.04

4.07

7.06

TABLE 1. Details of the children participating in Experiments 1 and 2.

reinforcers used throughout the study took the form ofencouragement and praise, and edibles such as fruit or nuts.

Experimental design The 3 x 4, object x location matrix shown in Table 2a was used as the basis of the training and testing procedure. Each child was taught expressive sign combinations which were used to tact the teacher’s placement of objects in particular locations. Individual cells within the matrix corresponded to the placement of one of the objects in (or on) one of the locations. A modified multiple probe across sign combinations design (Homer and Baer, 1978), of the kind used by Remington, Watson, and Light (1990), was employed. This was used to evaluate the efficacy of teaching and the degree to which teaching specific sign combinations led to the occurrence of specific productive sign recombinations. The design involved three phases. First, pretest data were obtained to establish each child’s expressive and receptive speech and signing performance on the separate object and location elements used in the training and testing matrices. Next, the children were taught sign combinations T1, T2, and T3, following which they were tested for the emergence of all untrained items in the matrix. This


procedure of training and testing continued for items T4-T6, with further tests after each new item was acquired, unless a child showed productive generalisation throughout the matrix. Finally, posttests (Table 2b, c) were carried out using novel object and location elements. The aim of these tests was to assess the extent to which the children had learned the significance of sign order in conveying meaning.

Materials The materials used to provide discriminative stimuli for signing were either real objects or scaled-down models. Some items were designated as “objects” in the training matrix (a pencil, a brick, and a key); others were designated, and could be canonically viewed, as “locations’’ (a cup, a table, a bag, and a plate) into or onto which the “objects” were placed. Thus, in Table 2a the top left cell corresponds to “pencil [in] cup”, and the bottom right cell is “key [on] plate”, with the locative prepositional relationship, which is constant throughout the matrix, implied rather than explicitly signed. Like the training matrix, the first of the two posttest matrices (Table 2b, “irreversible” posttest) comprised some elements which could be canonically viewed as “objects” (knife, ball), and others which could easily be seen as “locations” (box, chair). The second posttest matrix (Table 2c, “reversible” posttest), however, used essentially flat objects. These were all equally natural or appropriate as either objects or locations (paper, letter, picture, book). In every case, the signs taught were drawn from the Makaton vocabulary (Walker, 1978).

Data collection and reliability All sessions were videotaped and the children’s performances were subsequently coded by the teacher. One in three sessions was checked for reliability by a second observer. Reliability was calculated by dividing the number of agreements by the sum of the number of agreements and the number of disagreements, and multiplying by 100. Mean reliability estimates throughout the experiment were: Stewart, 95 per cent (range 88- 100 per cent); Tony, 96 per cent (range 89- 100 per cent).

PROCEDURE AND RESULTS Pretests Each child was extensively pretested for existing knowledge of the object and location elements which made up the combinations in each of the matrices shown in Table 2. Tests evaluated both receptive and expressive knowledge of the signs, and the corresponding spoken words for each element. In expressive tests the child was shown an object or location element (see Materials section), and prompted either to name it vocally or to make the corresponding sign. In receptive tests, the teacher spoke the word or made the sign corresponding to an object or location element, and the child was prompted to point to one of five items which included the element named or signed. All combinations were presented three times


OBJECTS

TABLE 2a

CUP TABLE BAG PLATE

PENCIL Ti T* p2 p,

BRICK Pl T3 T, p,

KEY p3 p.l T, Te

LOCATIONS

OBJECTS/

LOCATIONS

PICTURE BOOK

PAPER P'

LETTER P' P'

TABLE 2b

LOCATIONS

OBJECTS

BOX CHAIR kl TABLE 2c

LOCATIONSlOBJECTS

TABLE 2. Matrices of object x location combinations used during training (Table 2a) and testing (Tables 2b and 2c). The combinations

marked T were directly taught. Those marked P probed to test for the presence of novel recombinations (P' indicates combinations that were

probed in both possible orders).


each in random order as expressive tests, and five times each as receptive tests. In both types of test, noncontingent reinforcement was given (on a fixed ratio 1 schedule for praise and a variable ratio 2 schedule for edibles), in order to maintain performance without teaching the discriminations involved. In all tests, items were regarded as known only when the probability of correct guessing was very low (Clarke, Remington, and Light, 1986; Watson, 1986).

Both the receptive sign and receptive speech pretests showed that Stewart and Tony each achieved 80 per cent or more correct responses on all 15 of the individual elements from the matrices in Table 2. In the corresponding expressive sign pretests, both children also produced performance results that clearly exceeded chance. Each achieved at least two out of three trials correct on each of the 15 elements. In the expressive speech pretest, however, Tony’s performance was better than chance for only five elements, and Stewart’s for only nine.

Prior to training, baselines for expressive and receptive sign combinations were also obtained for the 12 items in the training matrix (Table 2a), the four irreversible posttest items (Table 2b), and the eight reversible posttest items (that is, the four cells of Table 2c with the elements in both possible orders). In the expressive baseline trials, each child was verbally prompted to sign the object-location combination corresponding to the teacher’s action of placing an object in a location. Three trials on each ofthese combinations were carried out in random order, and noncontingent reinforcement was delivered between trials in order to maintain performance without teaching the discriminations. Neither child responded correctly by using signs to label any of the combinations tested.

During receptive baseline trials, each child had access to three object and three location items. Using signs the teacher instructed the child to place an object in a particular location. Five trials per combination were carried out in a random sequence, again using the noncontingent reinforcement procedure. Neither child performed completely reliably on the receptive signing combination baselines; Stewart achieved 50 per cent, and Tony 53 per cent, correct responses.

In summary the situation, before matrix training began, was as follows. With respect to signing skills, both children had effective expressive and receptive signing behaviour for the object and location elements, but poor receptive, and no expressive, signing behaviour for the combinations to be trained. In terms of speech skills, both children produced high levels of


receptive speech with respect to elements of the combinations to be trained and tested.

Matrix training The children were systematically taught the expressive sign combinations corresponding to the matrix items T1, T2, and T3. The discrimination between T 1 and T 2 was taught first. Then, a stimulus rotation procedure was followed, as described by Remington and Clarke (1983). This was to ensure that performance of the previously trained sign combinations was maintained while T3 was being taught. Each trial began with the teacher placing an object in a location and asking: “What did I do then?”. Sign teaching was carried out by modelling, and by moulding the child’s hands to approximate the sign(s) required. The target sign combinations themselves, such as “pencil in cup”, were never verbally labelled by the teacher. Social praise and edible reinforcers were presented contingent on correct performance.

When a criterion of 80 per cent correct responses was met for items Tl-T3, a probe procedure was used to check the children’s ability to produce correct sign combinations for all training matrix items. This procedure closely resembled the initial baseline trial.

Both children learned to produce the first three combinations with little difficulty, Stewart after 89, and Tony after 78, training trials. At this point, their ability to label all combinations in the matrix was tested. Both showed improvements from their zero baseline performance, Stewart producing 69 per cent, and Tony 47 per cent, correct expressive sign responses for untrained combinations. Correct responding was not limited to the untrained combinations whose elements had been trained, such as “brick (on) table”; rather, both children also showed improvements in combining items which had not yet appeared in the matrix training procedure.

The alternation of training and probing continued until all six of the items on the diagonal of the matrix had been learned. This procedure closely resembled that described in detail by Remington, Watson, and Light (1990). There were some modifications of the stimulus rotation procedure as detailed by Watson (1986) to include a “remedial” emphasis on combinations which had not resulted in production of the expected recombinations. By the completion of matrix training for items T 1 -T6, Stewart showed productive generalisation on 89 per cent, and Tony on 86 per cent, of test trials for the six untrained combinations in the matrix.


Posttests On completion of the final training matrix probe, Stewart and Tony were posttested on a 2 x 2 matrix comprised of object and location combinations that had not been trained (Table 2b). The individual elements had been established at pretest as being within their signed and spoken vocabularies. The four combinations were presented three times each, in a randomly ordered sequence, under conditions of noncontingent reinforcemeat. Stewart and Tony both showed productive generalisation to these novel combinations, each achieving a mean performance level of 83 per cent in the expressive signing posttest. In the corresponding receptive signing posttest for the combinations in Table 2b, both children showed large and significant improvements in performance over pretest: Stewart achieved 85 per cent, and Tony 90 per cent, correct responses.

The final set of posttests, designed to examine the importance of sign order, involved the reversible 2 x 2 matrix shown in Table 2c. Since the elements in each cell were tested in both orders, there were eight possible combinations. These were presented three times, in random order, under conditions of noncontingent reinforcement. Tony regularly produced two- sign combinations involving the correct signs, but there was no indication that he was able to differentiate the teacher’s actions in terms of sign order. For example, placing the letter on the book and placing the book on the letter did not reliably result in him producing the corresponding sign sequences in the correct order. Rather, Tony’s sequencing performance was correct only at a chance level (54 per cent).

Stewart’s performance, however, was above chance (75 per cent correct). On trials in which he made an error, he tended to produce only the first sign, which corresponded to the object being placed. This pattern of performance suggested that Stewart’s signing might be controlled by the order of the teacher’s actions, rather than by their final outcome. For example, when putting the letter on the book, the teacher touched the letter first. Stewart was prevented from signing until the teacher’s action was complete. However, close examination of the video record suggested that he began responding in anticipation with the first sign, on the basis of the teacher’s “first move” (which was always to pick up an object prior to placing it in the location).

T o check this further, the combinations in the “reversible” matrix (Table 2c) were examined using a receptive posttest. Under these conditions, where sign order was the only cue to effective action, Stewart’s


responses to the teacher’s sign order did not exceed chance levels (53 per cent). Tony’s performance on this test was also at chance level (60 per cent).

Discussion The results of this study replicate those obtained by Remington, Watson, and Light (1990). However, a different kind of matrix was used (object and location rather than attribute and object) with two different children. As a result of matrix training (Table 2a), both children learned the sign combinations specifically taught, and showed the ability to recombine the signs taught to other combinations involving the same signs. They also generalised their skills to produce new combinations based on signs which were not included in the original matrix (Table 2b). The data show that training in expressive signing was sufficient to produce generalisation to the receptive mode with these children.

The data from the “reversible” matrix (Table 2c), are more problematic. They show clearly that, in the context ofthe teaching matrices, the children had learned to use signs in a regular order and they respected this ordering in some generalisation performances. However, their communicative behaviour was not truly under the effective control of cues which should have determined sign order. Simply put, they had missed the “syntactical” significance of sign order.

Word order is an important characteristic of language. It was decided, therefore, to pursue the question of the significance of sign order by investigating further the performances of four children who had already shown that they were competent in the use of signs in combination (Remington, Watson, and Light, 1990). Thus, the main purpose of Experiment 2 was to establish whether such children could succeed with a “reversible” matrix, in which cues from the training items, which would usually control appropriate behaviour independent of sign order, were absent. Ifthe children did not respond correctly to sign order, could they be taught to do so?

EXPERIMENT 2

METHOD

People studied Four children took part in this study. Robert, Tina, Clare, and Susan had been found, via a survey of local schools, to be already capable of combining signs (and


spoken words) productively in their ordinary environment. They had all successfully completed a colour X object matrix training task six months previously, and had shown the ability to generalise to colour and object combinations which did not appear in the training matrix. Remington, Watson, and Light (1 990) detail the school survey and the training procedures used. Data relating to the children’s chronological age, Merrill-Palmer scores (Stutsman, 1931), language skills (Reynell, 1977), and aetiology are shown in Table lb.

Setting The experimental setting was virtually identical to that used in Experiment 1.

Experimental design The experiment had three main phases. First, the four children were pretested, under conditions of noncontingent reinforcement. The aim was to establish their expressive and receptive signing and speech performance on the separate object and location elements used in the training and testing matrices. Next, they were similarly tested using the “irreversible” and “reversible” matrices shown in Tables 2b and 2c respectively. Children who failed to show sensitivity to sign order in the reversible matrix test, were taught expressive signs for object x location combinations using a second “reversible” matrix. A modified training procedure was used, designed to establish effective control of signing order.

Materials The testing matrices were based on the objects used for the generalisation posttests in Experiment 1 (Table 2b, 2c). However, additional objects were assembled for use as elements of the “reversible” training matrix, as shown in Table 3. All of

OBJECTSlLOCATIONS

OBJECTS/

L 0 CAT I 0 N S

TABLE 3. The matrix of reversible object x location combinations designed for use in Experiment 2. The combinations marked T were

directly taught in both orders, for example: T1 - “book [on] paper” and “paper [on] book”. Those marked P probed in both orders to test for the

presence of novel recombinations.


TABLE 4. Children’s pretest signing combination performance in Experiment 2 on tests involving the irreversible and reversible

combinations shown in Tables 2b and 2c respectively.

these items were essentially flat (book, picture, lid, plate, paper, letter, mirror), and thus did not provide any strong canonical cues regarding their possible function as objects or locations.

Data collection and reliability Data collection and reliability calculations were performed as in Experiment 1. Mean reliability estimates throughout the experiment were: Tina, 96 per cent (range 95-100 per cent); Susan, 96 per cent (range 88-100 per cent); Robert, 96 per cent (range 83- 100 per cent); Clare, 93 per cent (range 80- 100 per cent).

PROCEDURE AND RESULTS

Pretests The expressive and receptive signing performance of all the children was tested for the four possible “irreversible” combinations from the matrix shown in Table 2b, and for the eight possible “reversible” combinations from the matrix in Table 2c. The test procedures were precisely the same as those described in Experiment 1, and the results for all children are summarised in Table 4.

As might be expected with children who showed competence in using signs in combination in the natural environment, performance was good for “irreversible” combinations in both expressive and receptive signing tests.


Performance on the “reversible” combinations was equally good for Tina and Susan, but less good for Clare and Robert. In summary, it appeared from the pretest data that Tina and Susan could use sign order as a cue to meaning in this situation, but that Clare and Robert were unable to do so.

Matrix training The aim of this phase of the study was to teach Clare and Robert the appropriate sequence of expressive signs for items corresponding to the cells of the matrix shown in Table 3. The training procedure was based on that used in Experiment 1. Thus, the sign combinations marked “T” in Table 3 were directly taught, using methods identical to those described earlier. The difference was that each training item was taught in two possible combinations. Cell T 1, for example, involved teaching the combinations “paper [on] book” and “book [on] paper”. The children were to respond conditionally to each of the two actions performed by the teacher with the signs in the appropriate order.

Pretests showed that the individual signs for elements of the matrix were already in the children’s expressive and receptive vocabulary. Therefore, an attempt was made to teach the six combinations corresponding to T l - T 3 before introducing the first block of probe trials to test for generalisation throughout the matrix. Unfortunately, however, neither child completed this initial phase of the matrix training. The acquisition data showed that, on most trials, the children produced signs corresponding to the object and location used by the teacher, but they did not reliably order them correctly. Observation suggested that both children tended to produce one order for a particular pair of signs, for example, “paper [on] book”, for a series of trials, regardless of which element was the object, and which the location. The association between the direction of the action and the ordering of the signs eluded them. Thus, even after more than 250 teaching trials on items Tl-T3, neither child showed any tendency to produce signing performances above chance levels (40-60 per cent correct). As both children were obviously experiencing difficulty with the task, and as there was no evidence of a trend towards improvement, the teaching procedure was terminated.

Discussion Although the children in Experiment 2 already spontaneously used signs in flexible combinations, there were some for whom the teacher’s actions did not control sign order in a way comparable to the control of word order


expected in spoken English. With these children, it was not possible to devise an effective matrix training procedure to develop such control. The data imply that care should be taken not to overinterpret children’s natural signing behaviour as offering evidence of sensitivity to syntactical rules. Their apparent ability to use signs productively may be mediated, at least in part, by the contextual cues inherent in the communicative situation. Stripped of the help which these cues provide, some children, who seemed syntactically competent, were unable to use signs effectively, despite a strong situational demand to do so.

Although the training technique developed to produce control of sign order proved inadequate in this study, the search for more effective procedures should not be abandoned. Refinements or modifications of the procedure may well be capable of producing a more satisfactory outcome.

GENERAL DISCUSSION This study, together with a previous paper by Remington, Watson, and Light (1990), has reported a series of experiments involving extensive work with 12 children with mental handicaps. Four ofthe children were selected on the basis of prior ability to combine signs in their spontaneous communication. The remainder were “single signers”. Remington, Watson, and Light (1990) showed that in the case of colour and object combinations it was possible, using the matrix approach, to teach children who used either single or multiple signs to use certain sign combinations expressively, and to generalise this skill to other possible colour and object combinations, both inside and outside the matrix. Experiment 1 , reported here, replicated all of these results with different children and a different type of sign combination.

The present study, however, also qualified the interpretation of the data previously reported (Remington, Watson, and Light, 1990). Specifically, the status of the sign combinations produced by the highly structured matrix training programme required close examination. Do such combinations correspond in any meaningful sense to real linguistic usage? Or, have children merely learned a combinational “trick”, in the context of a specific kind of game played out between teacher and child?

The focus on sign order in this study represented one attempt to answer these questions. Children were taught to label the “stepped diagonal” combinations, using a fixed sign order which corresponded to English word order. Not only were their responses on these taught combinations


consistently ordered, but so were their generalisation responses to other matrix combinations. Where this occurred (colour and object combinations, and “irreversible” object and location combinations), however, sign order carried no real linguistic information. It is only when children can respond conditionally with alternative sign orders which are equally probable and equally “meaningful”, but which are appropriate only on particular occasions, that sign order can be said to be functioning in a linguistic fashion.

The final “reversible combination” posttest of Experiment 1 showed clearly that two children, who had mastered and generalised irreversible combinations, were not using sign order as a systematic cue to meaning. The teaching phase of Experiment 2 indicated that the use of reversible combinations in the initial teaching matrix did not result in children producing appropriate, conditional sequential responses. In other words, children did not learn to use sign order as a cue to meaning from the training methods described.

This result should not be interpreted as implying that meaning cannot be carried by order. If such an outcome does not occur easily, it might still be achieved after further research on teaching procedures. Information about the relationship between objects could be carried in some other way; for example, by the relative spatial location of production of the two signs, or by the contrastive training of signs for the locational relationships coded in English by prepositions such as “on” and “under”. Remington and Light (1983, pp. 78-80) provide a discussion of the importance of contrastive teaching in determining signing behaviour as meaningful.

Another, rather more practical, question about the status of acquired combination skills concerns whether such skills will generalise beyond the context of teaching. Will the children use the acquired sign combinations (and generalised combinations) in interchanges with anyone other than the original teacher, or in situations other than the original teaching setting? The studies so far reported have not addressed this question, although Watson (1986) obtained encouraging results in a pilot study. The issue is an important one, not only in relation to matrix teaching, but also in relation to other highly structured approaches to sign teaching. It is true that teaching in one to one sessions, with a predetermined sequence of discrete trials, may not be the best way to produce functional language skills. It is equally true, however, that the power of certain remedial approaches depends crucially on this degree of structure. In the present case, even if the


matrix teaching approach were being used “for real” rather than in a research context, its reliance on the specific ordering and overlapping of the combinations taught would necessitate a structured, rather than a naturalistic or “incidental”, mode of teaching.

Carr (1985) has suggested that structured teaching methods should be used to establish language forms; but that incidental teaching procedures in the classroom and elsewhere should be used to establish their functional use. It remains to be seen how successful such separation of form and function can be in practice.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS The research described in this paper was supported by a studentship awarded to Julia Watson by the Economic and Social Research Council. The authors are grateful for the cooperation of the headteachers, staff, and pupils of: Exeter House School, Salisbury; Middle Park School (Diagnostic Unit), Havant; Tankerville School, Eastleigh; Ridgeway House School, Southampton; Salterns School, Totton; and Greenacres School, Winchester.

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