Category Archives: Research

Exploring the core and fringe words from Doha data

11 most commonly used wordsOver the past month Amatullah Kadous has been visiting specialist centres across Doha gathering word lists from speech and language therapists and specialist teachers working with AAC users.

These lists have come from young children and adults using PCS symbols in English and the top 11 used on at least 10 communication boards/books or devices can be seen in the graph above.   The lists have provided us with our first insight into the types of vocabulary used and the stages reached by individuals in their generation of language. The discussion around core vocabularies remains vital if we are to develop a dictionary that allows users to make the greatest use of clearly understandable simple and multi-functional words represented by symbols that allows for generative language (Cannon & Edmond, 2009) in both Arabic and English.  It can be seen that many of the words above could be classed as ‘fringe’ words that are specific to a certain situation or individual – vital to aid meaning to phrases and sentences but not the linking words discussed in previous blogs.

A list of 100 frequently used core words provided by Prentke Romich Company (PRC) gathered from a group of resources (Banajee et al, 2003; Beukelman et al, 1984; Brown, 1973; Marvin et al 1994; Van Tatenhove, 2005 & 2009; Dolch, 1948; LAMP, 2009) has provided the team with an English core vocabulary but we still need to collect an Arabic list.

It should be noted that out of the 1186 unique English words and multiwords (some short phrases such as ‘where is Peter?) collected in Doha 70 match the PRC core words. The most frequently used 50 words found on at least six communication boards/books and devices are listed below. The number in brackets denotes the number of individuals using the word or multiword.

ball (16), car (16), eat (16), banana (13), apple (12), chair (11), juice (11), shoes (11), flower (10), spoon (10), toilet (10), cup (9), green (9), play (9), table (9), drink (8), finished (8), grapes (8), orange (8), stop (8), yellow (8), bed (7), bubbles (7), bus (7), cat (7), comb (7), duck (7), hall break (7), I (7), listen (7), pen (7), phone (7), red (7), scissors (7), sleep (7), watch (7), water (7), all done (6), bird (6), clock (6), dog (6), door (6), eating (6), fork (6), go (6), horse (6), look (6), nose (6), rabbit (6), shirt (6).

The PRC core words, along with the most frequently used words taken from the Doha lists have been selectively filtered using the symbol manager system to provide the team with a collection of symbols from which to make choices.  At present most AAC users are being presented with PCS symbols and a few have seen Widgit ones.  The other lists being used as comparisons are Sclera and ARASAAC.

References

Banajee, M., DiCarlo, C. & Stricklin, S. (2003). Core Vocabulary Determination for Toddlers. Augmentative and Alternative Communication, 19, 67-73.

Beukelman, D., Yorkston, K. & Naranjo, C. (1984). 500 most Frequently Occurring Words Produced by Five Adult AAC Users, Journal of Speech and Hearing Disorders, 49, 36.

Brown, R. (1973). A First Language: The Early Stages. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Cannon, B. & Edmond, G. (2009, April 14). A Few Good Words : Using Core Vocabulary to Support Nonverbal Students. The ASHA Leader. Web page accessed May 2014 http://www.asha.org/Publications/leader/2009/090414/f090414c.htm

Dolch, E.W. (1948). Problems inreading. Champaign IL: Garrard

Language Acquisition through Motor Planning (LAMP). (2009). Word List.Available: http://www.aacandautism.com/lamp. Last accessed 31st May 2014.

Marvin, C., Beukelman, D. & Bilyeu, D (1994). Frequently Occurring Home and School Words from Vocabulary-Use Patterns in Preschool Children: Effects of Context and Time Sampling, Augmentative and Alternative Communication, 10.

Van Tatenhove, G. (2005). Normal Language Development, Generative Language & AAC. revised October 2007 http://www.vantatenhove.com/files/NLDAAC.pdf

Van Tatenhove, G. (2009). The Pixon Project Kit. Wooster, OH: Prentke Romich Company.

Dolch Sight Words. See http://www.dolchsightwords.org/

Language Acquisition through Motor Planning (LAMP). See www.AACandAutism.com

Debating multiword phrases and core vocabularies

“Several major transitions in language use take place during the first 5 years of life. Each transition allows the child to move to a higher level of complexity of expression and to accomplish communicative goals more flexibly and precisely than was done at the previous level. At least three of these transitions appear to be modulated to some degree by speech. In the first transition, prelinguistic to early linguistic communication, babbling provides the infant with a prelinguistic form of vocal behavior that is in many ways analogous to language.A second transition takes place in the movement from single words to multiword combinations. In the process of this transition, word order becomes a means by which children convey semantic role information, and transitional forms such as successive one-word utterances help to facilitate the child’s leap from single-word speech to multiword sentences. “(Paul, 1997) 

We are aiming to build a dictionary database in order to collect the initial core vocabularies in Arabic and English to help us decide which symbol sets we use and how much work there will be when it comes to adapting them for localisation in Qatar.    Once we have made that decision we can add all the symbols from the set or sets if they have been produced with a Creative Commons licence, providing the right attributes.   Finally the aim is to start voting on how acceptable each symbol is in term of language and culture  as well as:

  • translucency (How appropriate is a proposed symbol for  a suggested meaning?) (Bloomberg et al. 1990),
  • guessability (Can subjects guess the intended meaning of a symbol?) (Hanson & Hartzema 1995, Dowse & Ehlers 2001,2003), and
  • iconicity (How distinctive are the symbols?) (Haupt & Alant 2003).

whilst beginning the adaptation process for both core and fringe vocabularies.

We know when building the dictionary  that encourages dialogue that it is the verbs/doing words that often provide the main part of early conversation with question words such as What? Where? etc rather than just the user specific nouns.  So it is important to think how the symbols will develop when it comes to multiword expressions (MWEs) as described in Multiword Expressions a Pain in the Neck for NLP.

For instance – how many symbols should we add for a core vocabulary when we add the verb  ‘put’ –  should this word be linked with symbols for ‘put on’ , ‘put off’, put under, put over, put out?  ‘Put’ is found in the English core vocabulary but are all those phrases?   Sometimes there are over 16 symbols for one verb in the present tense.

put sample symbols

Picto-Selector showing some ARASAAC and Sclera symbols for multiword phrases with ‘put’

It also happens in Arabic, as has been discovered by Amatullah when collecting data for the core vocabularies …

While I was taking down some word lists I noticed that ‘play’ was a common word with one group and then with another group they were commonly using these images (each one separate, and each it’s own picture) for ‘play’, e.g. ‘play with the ball’, ‘play on the bike’, ‘play with the toys’.

 

The debate seems to be swaying in favour of having all options but where a “word occurs in our core vocabulary then we make a generic symbol for it so it can be combined with other symbols to make phrases UNLESS there is a commonly used phrase which falls in our core vocab. In this case we have one picture to represent the phrase. ”  Amatullah

If this is the case when we select the symbols we will need to allow for the fact that many include a noun  from the fringe vocabulary as part of the image, so we have ‘see’ television, or ‘look at’ and the symbol shows a man looking at the television and the symbol is categorised under action verbs as well as nouns and part of the home environment. 

Multiword expressions appear in all languages and if one is considering Natural Language Processing technologies as a way of supporting access to symbols for conversational and written communication strategies then according to Paul (1997) there may be problems to overcome related to ‘overgeneration,  idiomaticity, flexibility and lexical proliferation.’

References

Battle, D. E., ( 2012) Ed  Communication disorders in multicultural and international populations; 2012 Pub by Mosby, an imprint of Elsevier Inc.

Bloomberg K, Karlan GR, Lloyd LL (1990): The comparative translucency of initial lexical items represented by five graphic symbol systems and sets, Journal of Speech and Hearing Research 33, 717–25.

Dowse R, Ehlers MS (2001): The evaluation of pharmaceutical pictograms in a low literate South African population, Patient Education and Counseling 45, 87–99.

Dowse R, Ehlers MS (2003): The influence of education on the interpretation of pharmaceutical pictograms for communicating medicine instructions, International Journal of Pharmacy Practice 11, 11–18.

Hanson EC, Hartzema A (1995): Evaluating pictograms as an aid for counseling elderly and low-literate patients, Journal of Pharmaceutical Marketing and Management 9(3), 41–54.

Haupt E, Alant E (2003): The iconicity of picture communication symbols for rural Zulu children, South African Journal of Communication Disorders 48, 45–54

Ivan, A., Cicling-, C., & It, S. (2002). This document is downloaded from DR-NTU , Nanyang Technological Author ( s ) and Intelligent Text Processing : Third International Conference : CICLing-2002 , Lecture Notes in Computer publication by Proceedings of Computational Linguistics and Intelligence.

Netzer, Y. (2006). Semantic Authoring for Blissymbols Augmented Communication Using Multilingual Text Generation Semantic Authoring for Blissymbols Augmented Communication Using Multilingual Text Generation, (November).

Paul, R. (1997). Facilitating transitions in language development for children using AAC. Augmentative and Alternative Communication, 13(3), 141–148. doi:10.1080/07434619712331277958

Tatenhove, G. M. Van. (2007). Normal Language Development , Generative Language & AAC, (October), 1–11.

Moving forward with some questions…

During this last week we have been discussing the issues around the three main concerns arising – that of the core vocabulary, symbol sets already available and working with participants.  The diagram below is available in text format – Arabic Symbol Dictionary plans Feb to April

diagram of questions for Feb-April

Visits and telemeetings along with journal paper collections have started the process of making choices that will be further explored during three days of meetings between all the partners.

A few random questions have also arisen…

Does anyone have experience in evaluating the difference between the way text to speech works for users when presenting spoken words; which have to be listened to in the order they are said and may be colloquial (diglossic Arabic) and the written words and symbols which although they have an order on the page the reader has the flexibility to scan them in a any order?

Looking at a paper entitled “How do members of different language communities compose sentences with a picture based communication? Nakamura et al (1998) .  Would this be one way to start exploring the differences we know exist between Arabic and English language systems in terms of symbol selection?

Do we need to consider whether it will be necessary to change the graphic design of symbols we choose to suit participant preferences in childhood and adulthood?  This has been suggested by Sorcha Rabbitte and Stanislava Antonijevic-Elliott in their PowerPoint presentation ”  Graphic Design and Graphic Symbols: bridging the gap, exploring preferences (PDF download)

Huer and Nigram have debated the issues of cultural sensitivity of symbols  with certain aspects of Core vocabularies  such as  verbs causing particular issues.  Do we need to debate this in more depth?

Examining Perceptions of Graphic Symbols Across cultures

Do Individuals from Diverse Cultural and Ethnic backgrounds perceive graphic symbols differently Nigram

Response to Nigram

These references are important as  we are not only trying to make a dictionary that is culturally sensitive but also one that will offer practicioners the chance to encourage literacy skills.  So do need to explore different symbol systems such as the Unity system, Minspeak , Semantic Compaction etc.?

Minspeak and Unity

We also need to consider symbol choices where not everyone is speaking Arabic but are living in Qatar.  Evans et al have a presentation on the subject in relation to their work with Somali patients visiting medical centres in UK. Evans 2006 – Using Iconicity to Evaluate Symbol Use

Many researchers are now exploring Natural Language Generation (NLG) and AAC as a tool to use for taking lists of words and symbols to symbol set creation for independent generation of vocabularies/stories etc.  Do we need to explore this one in more depth?   Bliss may be an easier system to manipulate using NLG for both languages but perhaps not so transparent or translucent as some of the more pictorial symbol systems.

Professor Annalu Waller and Rolf Black are  engaged in this research and visits to Dundee are planned.  How was School today

Further links

Developing intercultural awareness – elearning website with useful links defining culture and intercultural awareness

 Cultural Issues in the Practice of Augmentative and Alternative Communication
Mary Blake Huer and Gloria Soto – presentation to ASHA in Miami, 2006

A Clinician’s Guide to Arabic Language and Culture by Martinez et al supervised by Rahul Chakraborty – Texas State University, USA

Cultural Competence from the The American Speech-Language-Hearing Association (ASHA website)

 

 

 

 

Comparing free /creative commons symbol dictionaries using an English Core Vocabulary

Speech and Language Therapists and other professions involved with the development of communication sets using symbols and pictograms have tended to use core vocabularies with supplementary words being added as required.

As a way of looking at three symbol dictionaries that are freely available I have taken words from the set developed by Gail Van Tatenhove and available from Prenkte Romich Company as a PDF download of ‘100 Frequently Used Core Words’  These are gathered from users of English in the United States of America and this is just to provide an example of the variations in the types of symbols available.

The three chosen symbols sets are ARASAAC, Mulberry and Sclera so far with a few of the core vocabulary words available as a Word Document. 100 core words with symbols

symbol sets

Example of symbol comparisons with some core words

It is possible to carry out this type of comparison using Picto-Selector – a  free small Windows / MacOS program that can be downloaded from the project website.   This program also allows you to see all the images in one area with choices of several other small dictionaries of images.

pictoselector images

Showing the choice of symbol dictionaries

 

References used by Prenkte Romich

Banajee, M., DiCarlo, C. & Stricklin , S. (2003). Core Vocabulary Determination for Toddlers. Augmentative and Alternative Communication, 19, 67-73.

Beukelman, D., Yorkston, K. & Naranjo, C. (1984). 500 most Frequently Occurring Words Produced by Five Adult AAC Users, Journal of Speech and Hearing Disorders, 49, 36.

Brown, R. (1973). A First Language: The Early Stages. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Marvin, C., Beukelman, D. & Bilyeu, D (1994). Frequently Occurring Home and School Words from Vocabulary – Use Patterns in Preschool Children: Effects of Context and Time Sampling,
Augmentative and Alternative Communication, 10.

Van Tatenhove, G. (2005). Normal Language Development, Generative Language & AAC. revised October 2007  http://www.vantatenhove.com (accessed 4th February, 2014)

Van Tatenhove, G. (2009). The Pixon Project Kit. Wooster, OH: Prentke Romich Company.

Dolch Sight Words. See http://www.dolchsightwords.org/ (accessed 4th February, 2014)

Language Acquisition through Motor Planning (LAMP). See www.AACandAutism.com (accessed 4th February, 2014)

AAC Dictionary for Functional Communication skills as well as Literacy Skills

I have begun to look at the impact that wishing to extend the symbol dictionary to one that will also enhance literacy skills may have on the project design. The first presentation I came across has provided some guidelines for those supporting English AAC users and is backed by research funded in USA – AAC-RERC is a Rehabilitation Engineering Research Center that functions as a collaborative research group dedicated to the development of effective AAC technology.   I wanted to see where text to speech (speech synthesis) could help and see how the need to include not just the alphabet with sound support, but also letter combinations, blending and segmentation that help with reading and spelling might also need to be in place, bearing in mind this is not necessarily the case in Arabic. That will be the next stage of the research.

There is a presentation provided by Professor Janice Light (Penn State University) describing the components of effective literacy interventions for individuals who require AAC called “Maximizing the Literacy Skills of Individuals who Require AAC”

I have taken the main elements and added the image of a set of books to each section that would have an impact on the symbol dictionary.  The text version of the mindmap  can also be downloaded.

There is the importance of being able to link the words learnt in the reading exercise  to  symbols available in the dictionary to enable AAC users to show they have understood or remembered the word. This means that there will need to be a way of adding symbols and words at anytime with guidance for image creation and categorisation.

As mentioned offering phoneme segmentation and ways of showing an understanding of sound blending is important.  Speech output whether this is human or a good quality synthetic computer generated voice should be available to encourage, reinforce and enhance literacy skills.
AAC Dictionary for Functional Communication skills as well as Literacy Skills

The information for this blog came from a “literacy program developed and evaluated by Dr. Janice Light and Dr. David McNaughton through a research grant (#H133E030018) funded by the National Institute on Disability and Rehabilitation Research (NIDRR) as part of the AAC-RERC.”  I will be adding the academic papers related to this subject to our Useful Articles page but here are some that were included at the end of the AAC-RERC slides.

 References

Light, J. Kelford Smith, A. (1993). The home literacy experiences of preschoolers who use augmentative communication systems and of their nondisabled peers.
Augmentative and Alternative Communication, 910-25.

Light, J. McNaughton, D. (1993). Literacy and augmentative and alternative communication (AAC): The expectations and priorities of parents and teachers. Topics in Language Disorders, 13(2), 33-46.

Millar, D., Light, J., McNaughton, D. (2004). The effect of direct instruction and Writer’s Workshop on the early writing skills of children who use Augmentative and
Alternative Communication. Augmentative and Alternative Communication, 20, 164-178.

Fallon, K., Light, J., McNaughton, D., Drager, K. Hammer, C. (2004). The effects of direct instruction on the single-word reading skills of children who require Augmentative and Alternative Communication (AAC). Journal of Speech Language Hearing Research, 47,
1424-1439.

Kelford-Smith, A., Thurston, S., Light, J., Parnes, P. O’Keefe, B. (1989). The form and use of written communication produced by nonspeaking physically disabled individuals using microcomputers. Augmentative and Alternative Communication, 5, 115- 124.

Light, J., Binger, C., Kelford Smith, A. (1994). The story reading interactions of preschoolers who use augmentative and alternative communication and their mothers. Augmentative and Alternative Communication, 10,255-268. 15

There is also a Bibliography: Literacy and AAC, Literacy and Disability provided by Communication Disabilities Access Canada (CDAC)

 

A Participatory Approach to Research

The Arabic symbol dictionary research project is going to require a considerable amount of participation from all those taking part. Without the help and support of AAC uses and those expects and carers exploring the best way to help these individuals to communicate every day, this project will not succeed. Therefore at this juncture it is important to examine the various  ways of encouraging the types of participation that could support the way the team works with those who may be willing to help.

Members of the team working on this project have had experience of participatory research in the past and have published on the subject with a paper titled “Exploring the technology experiences of disabled learners in higher education: challenges for the use and development of participatory research methods” (download Word doc).  But as a way of introducing the subject on this blog it seemed to be easier to present a series of diagrams.

There have been several authors who have discussed the different ways of working in a participatory fashion and have highlighted some of the issues such as Zarb (2003) who writes

” Research cannot ever lead directly to the empowerment of disabled people (or any other group for that matter). As Mike Oliver points out, empowerment is not something that can be given, but something that people must take for them selves. The key issue – “is not how to empower people but, once people have decided to empower themselves, precisely what research can do to facilitate this process” (Oliver, 1992, p. 111)

As can be seen in the mindmap below and the outline notes there are many dilemmas in the quest to encourage a participatory approach to research with disabled individuals. 

Participatory Approach

Outline version

  • Research done with people rather than on people (Reason & Heron 1986)
      • Equality in research relationships but not reject expert knowledge
        • Ensure research owned by participants as well as researchers (Cornwell &Jewkes 1995:1667)
          • Participants encouraged to own the outcome by setting the goals and sharing in decisions about processes (Everitt et al 1992:50)
        • Make traditional research more effective and meaningful
    • Essential to be aware of the issues involved
      • Need clarity of agreed aims and objectives as well as the roles of the researchers and participants. (Ward & Trigler 2001 Pg 58)
        • An overemphasis on getting the process right in terms of inclusion, can lead to mistakes being made in locating methods to answer the questions.” (Walmsley, 2004 Pg 32)
      • Discuss and be aware of how the research may affect participants.
      • Not the same as emancipatory research that is controlled by participants.
        • Walmsley  (2004) says it is widely accepted that, in contrast to emancipatory research, in participatory research, non-disabled people have an enduring role.”
      • Outcomes must be more than just reconstructed stories or mere validations of research undertaken (Duckett & Pratt , 2007)
      • Participation at the outset will help reduce incorrect labelling (disability/ability) or assumptions being made as to learner preferences.
      • Awareness of Funder’s requirements & Time constraints affecting degree of participation and possible outcomes
        • Chapell argues that “participatory research can be understood better as a pragmatic compromise between conflicting pressures on researchers. ..” this is when compared to emancipatory research as described by Zarb (1992)
  • Semi-structured interviews

Degrees of Participation

As can be seen from the diagram below there are degrees of participant involvement and it was felt that for the symbol dictionary project, the only way forward would be if the team and researchers initiated ideas and shared their thoughts with participants.  Those participants using AAC Devices may not necessarily understand the linguistic elements of the project or be able to provide ideas if they have no knowledge of all the symbol systems on the market or the type of pictograms available in Arabic.  However, their support in making decisions about ideas presented will be essential, as will that all the experts and carers.  It would also be helpful to have the involvement of outside experts who could become critical friends as a way of seeking informal advice at times when concerns about particular issues arise.

participatory involvement

 

So in an adaptation of Fajerman and Treseder’s diagram (2000), the chosen methodology involves the researcher initiating concepts but there are shared decisions with participants. So the “researcher has the initial idea but participants are involved in every step of the planning and implementation. Not only are their views considered  but participants are also involved in taking the decisions.” 

References

Chappell, A (2000) Emergence of participatory methodology in learning difficulty research: understanding the context. British Journal of Learning Disabilities, 28, 38-43

Cocks E. & Cockram J. (1995) The participatory research paradigm and intellectual disability. Mental Handicap Research, 8: 25–37.

Cornwall, A. & Jewkes, R. 1995, “What is Participatory Research?”, Social Science and Medicine, vol. 41, no. 12, pp. 1667-1676.

Duckett, P. & Pratt, R. 2007, “The emancipation of visually impaired people in social science research practice”, British Journal of Visual Impairment, 25, 1, 5-20.

Everitt, A., Hardiker, P., Littlewood, J. and Mullender, A. (1992) Applied Research for Better Practice, Macmillan, London.

Fajerman, L. and Treseder, P. (2000) Children are Service Users too, Save the Children Publications, 17 Grove Lane, London, SE5 8RD.

French, S. & Swain, J. 2004, “Researching Together: A Participatory Approach,” in Physiotherapy: A Psychosocial Approach, 3rd edn, S. French & J. Sim, Eds., Butterworth-Heinemann, Oxford.

Fischer, G., & Ostwald, J. (2002) “Seeding, Evolutionary Growth, and Reseeding: Enriching Participatory Design with Informed Participation, In Proceedings of the Participatory Design Conference (PDC’02), Malmö University, Sweden, pp. 135-143.

Newell, A., Carmichael, J. & Morgan, M (2007) Methodologies for involving older adults in the design process. In Proceedings of the 4th International Conference on Universal Access in HCI: http://www.springerlink.com/content/53t5026735v65721/fulltext.pdf

Radermacher, H. (2006) Participatory Action Research With People With Disabilities: Exploring Experiences Of Participation, Doctoral Thesis. Victoria University.

Richardson, M (2000) How we live: participatory research with six people with learning difficulties, Journal of Advanced Nursing 32, 6, 1383–1395.

Ward, K., & Trigler, J. S. (2001). Reflections on participatory action research with people who have developmental disabilities. Mental Retardation, 39, 57–59.

Zarb, G. (1992) On the Road to Damascus: First steps towards changing the relations of research production, Disability, Handicap and Society, 7, 2, 125 – 38.

Zarb G (2003) Running out of steam? The impact of research on disability policy and the disability rights agenda keynote paper presented at Disability Studies: Theory, Policy and Practice Conference Lancaster