Analyzing the Non-Linguistic Communication Functioning of Persons with Mental Retardation / Les Sternberg.

The paper proposes that research efforts should be focused on understanding the non-linguistic functioning of individuals with severe degrees of mental retardation, recognizing its place as a potential stand-alone system in satisfying communicative needs and options, and understanding the mechanisms that account for the presence and use of such a system. It describes a research project which analyzed the non-linguistic functioning of persons with profound mental retardation who resided in a California education/treatment center. Subjects tended to use elemental forms of non-linguistic communication which served basic functions. Low frequency of pointing gestures, coupled with higher than expected frequencies of more elemental forms, may indicate that pointing can serve as a transition bridge to the acquisition of more refined gestures. The low frequency of natural gestures may indicate that formal language acquisition should not be expected of this population. Project data indicated the need to incorporate potential co-occurrence measures, such as cognitive and environmental intrusiveness measures, into the research paradigm. Includes 14 references. (JDD)

Researchers. ericd

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