Augmentative and alternative communication (AAC) provides many individuals who have little or no functional speech with a means to enter the world of communication. Aided and/or unaided symbols are used as a means of reception and expression to create shared meaning. The selection of an appropriate symbol set/system is vital and iconicity plays a central role in this process. The Western-based symbol set, Picture Communication Symbols (PCS) (Johnson, 1981), is readily available and widely used in South Africa, despite little information existing on its iconicity to South African populations with disabilities. This study aimed to determine the iconicity of Picture Communication Symbols (PCS) for children with English Additional Language (EAL) and intellectual disability. A quantitative, non-experimental, descriptive design was used. Thirty participants between the ages of 12;00 and 15;11 (years; months) with EAL and intellectual disability were required to identify 16 PCS presented thematically on a ‘bed-making’ communication overlay in response to a gloss read out by the researcher. The results indicated that, overall, the 16 PCS were relatively iconic to the participants. The results also indicated that the iconicity of PCS can be manipulated and enhanced and that it can be influenced by other PCS that are used simultaneously on the communication overlay. The reasons for these findings are described. The clinical and theoretical implications of this study’s results are discussed, followed by a critical evaluation of this study and, finally, recommendations for future research are suggested. / Dissertation (Master of Arts)--University of Pretoria, 2012. / Centre for Augmentative and Alternative Communication (CAAC) / unrestricted

The aim of this study was to determine the role of visual language input on PCS sentence construction. Thirty-nine participants were divided into two comparable groups and exposed to two inputs of presentations of PCS to investigate the impact of each input on the sentence construction of the participants. In the SVO input the sequence of buttons was in the normal English word order sequence (Subject-Verb-Object) and in the SOV input the word order was Subject-Object-Verb. Both input groups had to answer six questions by using PCS as well as speech. The findings indicated that the participants did not sequence their output to match the word order of the unfamiliar SOV input. The participants receiving the SOV condition used fewer PCS elements than the participants receiving the SVO condition. The participants receiving the SVO and SOV inputs gave similar spoken answers. Reasons for these findings are discussed, as are the implications for further research. / Dissertation (M (Augmentative and Alternative Communication))--University of Pretoria, 2006. / Centre for Augmentative and Alternative Communication (CAAC) / unrestricted

Experiencing and expressing emotions is an essential part of psychological well-being. It is for this reason that most graphic symbol sets used in the field of AAC include an array of symbols depicting emotions. However, to date, very limited research has been done on children’s ability to recognise and use these symbols to express feelings within different cultural contexts. The purpose of the current study was to describe and compare Afrikaans and Sepedi speaking grade R children’s choice of graphic symbols when depicting four basic emotions, i.e. happy; sad; afraid; and angry. After ninety participants (44 Afrikaans and 46 Sepedi speaking) passed a pre-assessment task, they were exposed 24 emotions vignettes. Participants had to indicate the intensity the protagonist in the story would experience. The next step was for the participants to choose a graphic symbol from a 16 matrix overlay which they thought best represented the symbol and intensity. The results indicated a significant difference at a 1% level between the two groups’ selection of expected symbols to represent emotions. Afrikaans speaking participants more often chose expected symbols than Sepedi speaking participants to represent different basic emotions. Sepedi speaking participants made use of a larger variety of symbols to represent the emotions. Participants from both language groups most frequently selected expected symbols to represent happy followed by those for angry and afraid with expected symbols for sad selected least frequently. Except for a significant difference at the 1% level for happy no significant differences were present between the intensities selected by the different language groups for the other three basic emotions. No significant differences between the two gender groups’ choices of expected symbols to represent emotions or between the intensities selected by the different gender groups were observed. / Thesis (PhD)--University of Pretoria, 2011. / Centre for Augmentative and Alternative Communication (CAAC) / Unrestricted

The structure of graphic symbol utterance constructed by children with typical development and also children with little or no functional speech often differs considerably from spoken utterances. Whether the structure of graphic symbol utterances constructed by these two groups is influenced by similar factors is as yet unknown, as a systematic comparison between the two groups of children has not been conducted. This study aimed to investigate and compare the graphic symbol utterances arranged by children with little or no functional speech with those arranged by their typically developing peers when they were matched according to receptive language age. The utterances were analysed in terms of three variables, namely content, order and intelligibility. The results indicated that children with little or no functional speech do not differ significantly to children with typical development on tasks of graphic symbol utterance construction. The results also indicated that children with higher receptive language age start to use the spoken language word order as a model when arranging graphic symbol utterances more than children with lower receptive language age. The findings suggest that receptive language age plays a role in graphic symbol utterance constructions. The use of structures that do not follow spoken language may be explained by effects of the visual modality. / Dissertation (MA)--University of Pretoria, 2014. / gm2014 / Centre for Augmentative and Alternative Communication (CAAC) / unrestricted