Visual-graphic symbol acquisition in school age children with developmental and language delays

Augmented language systems have become both an integral component of communication intervention programs for children with severe communicative impairments and spurred research on their language and communication development. This study examined intrinsic and extrinsic factors that may influence the language development process for children with developmental disabilities, by exploring the relationship between varying degrees of symbol arbitrariness and extant speech comprehension skills in the discrimination, learning, and use of symbols for communication. For the study, 13 school-aged participants (M = 8.24 [years; months]), with both developmental and language delays, were provided experience with iconic Blissymbols and an arbitrary symbol set of lexigrams via observational computerized experience sessions. There was a modest difference in their ability to learn arbitrary versus iconic symbols. There were no differences if the vocabulary item was unknown prior to the symbol learning experience. These findings suggest that iconicity of a symbol may not be a critical factor in learning a symbol-referent relationship if a target referent is not yet known in comprehension.