"No Shoes; They Walked Away?": Effects of Enhancements on Learning and Using Blissymbols by Normal 3-Year-Old Children

Abstract

The present investigation studied the effects of enhancements on the learning, retention, transfer to the unlearned form, and use of Blissymbols in 40 normal 3-year-old children. The subjects, seen individually, learned either 12 standard Blissymbols (SBS) or the same 12 symbols in the enhanced form (EBS). The symbols were introduced with short explanations. The number of trials taken to reach >90% correct identification, the number of symbols selected appropriately to complete a communicative act, the number of symbols correctly identified a week after the acquisition phase was completed, and the number of symbols correctly identified in the untrained form of Blissymbols were determined. The results demonstrated that the subjects learned EBS faster than SBS, remembered more EBS than SBS in the retention task, did not differ in the communicative use of SBS and EBS, and were affected more negatively when presented with SBS than EBS in a task where the untrained form was presented. The results are discussed in terms of how very young children might benefit more from an illustration system such as EBS than from an orthographic system such as SBS.

Construction of graphic symbol sequences by preschool-aged children: Learning, training, and maintenance

“…This repeated contact with the same symbols may have served to strengthen learning and thus permitted it to be maintained over a period of a month. This is consistent with the idea that learning is reinforced by symbol revision (Raghavendra & Fristoe, 1995). The results also revealed that maintenance was somewhat lower in the 4-year-olds.…”

“…Furthermore, participants had repeated opportunities to reinforce their acquisition and use of symbols over the course of the larger protocol. This is in line with the idea that learning is strengthened and better when the symbols are reviewed after the initial acquisition, iconicity then losing part of its influence with repeated use of the symbols (Raghavendra & Fristoe, 1995).…”

“…The literature on iconicity mainly reports results of studies of learning of individual symbols. In many studies, symbol acquisition followed some kind of corrective feedback (Raghavendra & Fristoe, 1995). In the present study, symbols were explained to the children and, for the Blissymbols, the explanations concerned the meaning of the different visual elements of the symbols.…”

“…The verb symbols were explained briefly by pointing out some key elements (e.g., for the PUSH symbol, attention was drawn to the hand pushing on the object, and the arrow implying motion). Corrective feedback and review of the symbols was provided (Raghavendra & Fristoe, 1995). The child was expected to remember the symbols in order to point to them and name them correctly.…”