Total Communication: Structure and Strategy

6. SIMULTANEOUS COMMUNICATION

===============6=============== SIMULTANEOUS COMMUNICATION The preceding chapters dealt with the main media for visual reception of language. Having looked at speech and lipreading , fingerspelling, and signing-considering them as independent means of communication-attention will now be focused on the way in which these media, together with residual hearing, can be used in combination. Speech, being vocal, and signing or fingerspelling, being manual, can be produced at the same time. The concurrent use of both oral and manual media is known as simultaneous communication. It could be presumed that reception through oral and manual media would provide additional information, or redundancy , with the possibility of parts missed in one medium being received in the other. But there could be some problems involved. Bonvillian and Nelson (1978) aptly point out that such "redundancy" could only be helpful to the child who indeed was successfully processing considerable information in each of the modes-two channels of unprocessed information may constitute noise for the child rather than redundancy (p. 205). This chapter is concerned with some linguistic and psychological aspects of the simultaneous use of oral and manual media. It considers the perceptual and cognitive processes involved and examines some findings from research into the effects on reception of linguistic information by deaf children. COMMUNICATION AND INTERNALIZATION The previous explanation of visual systems shows that descriptive terms have been used in different, even contradictory, ways (as, for instance, the interchangeable use of "signed English" Simultaneous Communication 79 and "manual English"). As a basis for clear and consistent discussion, a model of the simultaneous communication of oral and manual media will be offered. This might provide an understanding of the processes of production and perception and also define the way in which terms are used in our description. With the help of Figure 24, the process of language communication in people with normal hearing is considered. Essentially, in communication through spoken language, one person expresses a message through speaking, and a second person receives the message through hearing. The modality of transmission can be described as vocal-aural, as the expressive medium is speaking and the receptive medium is hearing. The reception of the message by the second person leads to cognitive activity, such as memorizing , reasoning, or conceptualizing. As this activity uses words to represent objects and concepts, this can be termed symbolization. In written language, expression is by writing, reception is by reading, and information is transmitted by a motor-visual modality. The words are transmitted in written form, but these can be understood as having the same meaning as corresponding spoken words. The process, in which different sensory images are translated into impulses compatible with past experience, is well described by Child (1977). Consider how many ways you have experienced the concept "rosell-sroken word, written word, touch, smell, sight ... but al have been transformed to a common code. So there is a wide latitude within which sensory experience is given a common meaning ... the nervous system must carry out appreciable transformations of the input of J?hysical images in order for perception to take place (p. 65). In the example of written and spoken language the external graphic and acoustic signals are decoded into a form that allows cognitive processing. The product of cognitive activity might be new concepts which can be encoded into written or spoken form. PRODUCTION PERCEPTION ..ENCODING ..EXPRESSION "TRANSMISSION..,. RECEPTION .. ISpeaking I vocal-aural IListening I I Writing I motor-visual IReading I EXTERNAL COMMUNICATION Figure 24. Communication and internalization of language DECODING ..SYMBOLIZATION+ ENCODING Cognitive Processing INTERNAL REPRESENTATION - ----- .. 00 a ~ '" ...... (j ~ S f:: i:l ",. ~ g" Simultaneous Communication 81 In this descriptive model it will be seen that production comprises both encoding and expression, and perception comprises both reception and decoding. Production by one person and perception by another is linked by transmission of information. Within an individual, symbolization takes place between perception and production. Thus, external communication includes expression, transmission, and receptionj internal representation includes decoding, symbolization , and encoding. This model can be developed to observe what changes occur in the simultaneous communication of oral and manual media. Figure 25 explains that the transmission is multimodal, but also complex. The two expressive media are speaking and production of signing in conjunction with fingerspellingj for convenience, these can be labeled signing /fingerspelling. The three receptive media are listening, lipreading, and reading of signing/fingerspelling. This poses some questions about perception. For a person with...