MULTIMOD: Infant sign and gesture symposium

[Elizabeth Kirk]

Dear infant sign and gesture colleagues,

Myself, Liz Kirk, and Karen Pine here at the University of Hertfordshire are putting together a proposal for a symposium for the MULTIMOD conference 2009 

(if this link does not work then please paste this URL into your web browser: http://w3.eccd.univ-tlse2.fr/multimod2009/index.php?pg=acc&lg=en)

The conference is entitled "Multimodality of communication in children: gestures, emotions, language and cognition" and will be held in Toulouse, Thursday 9th July to Saturday 11th July, 2009. 

We would like to invite you to join us in this symposium, which will present international research on the linguistic, social and emotional impacts of encouraging hearing infants to communicate with signs or gestures.  

If you have recent research findings that you would like to contribute, then please email me (E.K...@Herts.ac.uk) to express your interest in joining us in this symposium. Once I know who is interested I will then be in touch with authors and collate abstracts and prepare the proposal so that it is ready to be submitted by the deadline of December 15th.

I look forward to hearing from you,

With kind regards,

Liz Kirk

Liz Kirk

School of Psychology

University of Hertfordshire

Hatfield

AL10 9AB

UK

Room number E380

The Research Complex

Tel: 01707 281148

Fax: 01707 285073

Email: E.K...@herts.ac.uk

[Claire Vallotton]

Hi Liz,
That looks like a wonderful conference!
I'm very interested in this and have two presentation ideas. I will tell you about both of them, then you can decide if either of them fit with the symposium you have in mind.
1) On the emotional aspect of encouraging infant sign: I could present my findings on the effects of an infant sign intervention on mother-child affective synchrony, positive affect, and mothers' affective responsiveness.
2) On the linguistic aspect of encouraging infant signs: I could present my findings on the effects of infant sign intervention on children's MLU (mean length of utterance/ combining words together)
3) On the cognitive aspect of encouraging infant signs: I could present data from a case study following one hearing infant's signing and language development from 6 to 18 months of age, presenting data on multi-modal representations of single concepts, pairing sound and gesture to differentiate concepts, and stringing together gestures and sounds to create multi-representation utterances.

Let me know which, if any, of these ideas would fit best with the symposium you're planning.

~Claire

[Chamarrita Farkas]

Dear Liz:

Yes, the conference sound wonderful, and I would be glad to enjoy to
conform an international research related to the different effects of
baby signs.

Following Claire's ideas, I have data related to:

1) On the emotional aspect of encouraging infant sign: I have data
related to the effects of the intervention on mother-infant synchronic
interactions, on shared attention, on stress related to parenthood and
the role of the educators, on parental efficacy, and on the educators'
representation of tantrum and crying. Some of these subjects I
presented in Japan, but for 2009 I will have more data collected.

2) On the developmental aspects: I have data related with the project
that I'm doing now. I have a sample of approximately 100 children, and
I'm evaluating their language development (with application of the CDI
to parents and educators at 12 and 18 months old; and TEVI scale to
the children, at 24 and 30 months old, this is a Chilean scale,
similar to Peabody test). Also we are using the Bayley-III scale with
a smaller group (60), and I will have information about the language
(comprehensive and expressive), motor and cognitive scales, at 12, 18,
24 and 30 months old.

Tell me what do you think about,

Regards

Chamarrita

[Claire Vallotton]

Elizabeth,
What is the word on our proposal for Multi-Mod?
Let me know which direction you've decided to take the proposal.
I am definitely still interested.

~Claire

On Tue, Aug 19, 2008 at 7:29 AM, Mechthild Kiegelmann <mechthild....@uni-tuebingen.de> wrote:

Dear Colleagues,

wunderful ideas. I would love to join. Next week, Claire and I will have some time to talk in person, after that I will have more details to mail.


Greetings from Boston


M.K.

Quoting Chamarrita Farkas <chfa...@puc.cl>:

Dear Liz:

Yes, the conference sound wonderful, and I would be glad to enjoy to
conform an international research related to the different effects of
baby signs.

Following Claire's ideas, I have data related to:

1) On the emotional aspect of encouraging infant sign: I have data
related to the effects of the intervention on mother-infant synchronic
interactions, on shared attention, on stress related to parenthood and
the role of the educators, on parental efficacy, and on the educators'
representation of tantrum and crying. Some of these subjects I
presented in Japan, but for 2009 I will have more data collected.

2) On the developmental aspects: I have data related with the project
that I'm doing now. I have a sample of approximately 100 children, and
I'm evaluating their language development (with application of the CDI
to parents and educators at 12 and 18 months old; and TEVI scale to the
children, at 24 and 30 months old, this is a Chilean scale, similar to
Peabody test). Also we are using the Bayley-III scale with a smaller
group (60), and I will have information about the language
(comprehensive and expressive), motor and cognitive scales, at 12, 18,
24 and 30 months old.

Tell me what do you think about,

Regards

Chamarrita

At 12:08 14-08-2008, Claire Vallotton wrote:

Hi Liz,
That looks like a wonderful conference!
I'm very interested in this and have two presentation ideas. I will  tell you about both of them, then you can decide if either of them  fit with the symposium you have in mind.
1) On the emotional aspect of encouraging infant sign: I could  present my findings on the effects of an infant sign intervention  on mother-child affective synchrony, positive affect, and mothers'  affective responsiveness.
2) On the linguistic aspect of encouraging infant signs: I could  present my findings on the effects of infant sign intervention on  children's MLU (mean length of utterance/ combining words together)
3) On the cognitive aspect of encouraging infant signs: I could  present data from a case study following one hearing infant's  signing and language development from 6 to 18 months of age,  presenting data on multi-modal representations of single concepts,  pairing sound and gesture to differentiate concepts, and stringing  together gestures and sounds to create multi-representation  utterances.

Let me know which, if any, of these ideas would fit best with the  symposium you're planning.

~Claire

On Thu, Aug 14, 2008 at 5:35 AM, Elizabeth Kirk  <<mailto:e.k...@herts.ac.uk>e.k...@herts.ac.uk> wrote:
Dear infant sign and gesture colleagues,

Myself, Liz Kirk, and Karen Pine here at the University of  Hertfordshire are putting together a proposal for a symposium for  the  <http://w3.eccd.univ-tlse2.fr/multimod2009/index.php?pg=acc&lg=en>MULTIMOD  conference 2009

(if this link does not work then please paste this URL into your  web browser:  <http://w3.eccd.univ-tlse2.fr/multimod2009/index.php?pg=acc&lg=en>http://w3.eccd.univ-tlse2.fr/multimod2009/index.php?pg=acc&lg=en)

The conference is entitled "Multimodality of communication in  children: gestures, emotions, language and cognition" and will be  held in Toulouse, Thursday 9th July to Saturday 11th July, 2009.

We would like to invite you to join us in this symposium, which  will present international research on the linguistic, social and  emotional impacts of encouraging hearing infants to communicate  with signs or gestures.

If you have recent research findings that you would like to  contribute, then please email me  (<mailto:E.K...@Herts.ac.uk>E.K...@Herts.ac.uk) to express your  interest in joining us in this symposium. Once I know who is  interested I will then be in touch with authors and collate  abstracts and prepare the proposal so that it is ready to be  submitted by the deadline of December 15th.

I look forward to hearing from you,

With kind regards,

Liz Kirk








Liz Kirk
School of Psychology
University of Hertfordshire
Hatfield
AL10 9AB
UK

Room number E380
The Research Complex

Tel: 01707 281148
Fax: 01707 285073

Email: <mailto:E.K...@herts.ac.uk>E.K...@herts.ac.uk

[chfa...@uc.cl]

Hi everybody!!

Nice to listen about you after this time. I hope your presentation in Boston
was O.K.
I'm interesting too in develop a share proposal. I like the idea, only I have
two comments:
a- I work specially with the caregivers in the child care centers, then we can
develop a survey also for them.... in my experience their opinions are
different from the parents' opinions, and if we can have this information, I
think will be very interesting.
b- In my case, I don't think I could do a web site forum, because my sample is
very low incomes and in high social risk, then internet participation is not
an option for them. Interviews (individual or grupal) I think will be better.

Regards, Chamarrita

Mechthild Kiegelmann escribió:
> Dear colleagues,
>
> same here, I am very interested in working on a proposal.
>
>
> This summer, Claire Vallotton and I met in Boston and we came up with
> the idea to work on a joint research projekt with those of you who are
> interested.
>
> I suggest that we work on crafting a short questionare for parents. We
> could collect data on questions like parent's motivations behind
> practicing Baby Signing, about which specific Gestures/Signs and/or
> Vokabulary the children are using at a given age range, and about the
> intensity of sign use in every day communication in the families and
> child care institutions. We could write a short survery, translate it
> in our various languages and try to get parents to participate in the
> survey via the various discussion forum web sites. What do you think
> about this idea? I would be happy to coordinate the work on such a
> project.
>
> Hope you are all well and not too stressed at the beginning of our
> semesters/school years (We start the semester next Monday...).
>
> Greetings from Tübingen, Germany
>
>
> Mechthild Kiegelmann

--

[chfa...@uc.cl]

--

[Claire Vallotton]

Hello everyone,
I agree with Chamarrita's idea that we can also develop a comparable survey to be used with teachers/caregivers/staff in early child education programs. There may not be large populations of child care & education centers using infant signs in most countries, but certainly in the United States. I think we could first develop the survey for parents, and do a first wave of data collection focused on parents who voluntarily use signs. Then we could re-word it as necessary for the early child care and education population, and find out similar information about their attitudes towards child development, reasons for using signs, and experiences with signing.

We will need to discuss the best formats for distributing the survey. On line is certainly the cheapest/easiest to reach most middle-to-high income families, but I agree with Chamarrita that it is not the best for all populations, and probably not for most early child education professionals (though possibly for some in the States...?).
 
I have found several resources that I think will be good for recruiting participants. There are some web-groups on line of signing parents; and Linda Acredolo has agreed to help us distribute a survey to the parents who use Baby Signs - probably through their network of consultants.

I'm excited to begin this project. Mechthild and I are meeting next month (November) to discuss more specific plans, survey content, etc. We will send out an email after that meeting to let you know more specifics and get your input.

~Claire

[Laura Nadeau]

Hello all,

I am new here, Laura Nadeau, and I am an infant teacher (going on eight years) at the Ohio University Child Development Center in Athens, Ohio.

I have been accepted into this group and hope to help however i can.

my phone: 740-818-5357 if you need it.

Let me know how I can be of assistance!

 

Laura Nadeau

On Tue, Oct 21, 2008 at 11:57 AM, <chfa...@uc.cl> wrote:

[Laura Nadeau]

as far as data collection goes:
the infants i work with have always ranged from 6 weeks to 24 months old.
I have over 7,000 photos if anyone wants to go through them....they are beautiful of all sorts of nonverbal communication.
especially of the infants "reading" sign books ;)
they do!  they always page through them and on each page they imitate the child in the picture and try to do the sign..

I also use art materials and writing materials as a form of communication in our classroom.
I have documentation of an 18 month old signing to me what she drew: - I asked her what the marks meant and she told me with sign language (rocking arms in front of her) that it was her "baby" 
just last year when I asked a 20 month old what she had drawn, she told me through gesture: (making a whoooosshh sound and putting her fingers through her hair) that it was the wind.

Some of The video footage i have is incredible to watch - the tones used by the children to communicate with eachother.  It is interesting to notice the eye contact with me, through the camera, and how this guides their behavior sometimes.

I have photos of Infants signing to me whatever words I asked.

I have photos of children in my classroom over the past 6 years.  Lots and Lots of them.

The use of the mirror and how they explore their expressions and self is also interesting to view.

Could any of this be something to include in the multimod conference?
also - receptive Language - HUGE - something that parents don't really "get" unless i let them know that today their child knew what I meant when i said,
"Anna please put that down and go to the shoe basket and bring me Emerson's shoes."  Anna is 13 months (twelve at the time) and is able to sign several words at this point.

Also - in regards to the benefits of sign: frustration level in our classroom is being lessened when the children are able to use signs to communicate their needs - especially when they are tired or want more food at meals.

okay,
I have to go to sleep -
let me know what you think....
thanks,
Laura

[Elizabeth Kirk]

Hello all,

Just a reminder that I will be submitting the baby sign research symposium at the beginning of next week.

Please could I have your abstracts by Friday the 5th of December.

With many thanks and best wishes,

Liz

On 22 Oct 2008, at 12:11, Liz Kirk wrote:

Dear all,

Hello, I hope that you are well.

I'm writing regarding the Multimod conference. I hope that you are all still happy to be part of the symposium. The symposium will be presenting international research evaluating both the linguistic and socio-emotional impact of sign interventions.

Your suggestions that I have received are all highly interesting and will be a great contribution to the symposium. 

It would be good to have a balance of presentations which focus on either the linguistic or the socio-emotional impact of sign interventions.

Claire and Chamarrita have research that they can present on both areas, so if you two could please both choose whether you would rather present your language or your emotional research and let me know that would be great. I will be presenting some of my work looking at the impact of signing on language development.

Mechthild, what do you have in mind to present?

Just so we all know what we are working towards, here are a few deadlines to keep in mind.

1st November. Please could you just send me a brief description (just a few lines) of what you plan to talk about, this will help me prepare the summary.

1st December. If you could please send me your abstract (not exceeding 600 words) by this date please.

15th December. I will submit the symposium by this date

15th February. We will be notified of acceptance.

Thanks everyone.

With best wishes,

Liz

Join the BPS Developmental Section mailing list by emailing Subscribe-d...@lists.bps.org.uk

Liz Kirk

School of Psychology

University of Hertfordshire

Hatfield

AL10 9AB

UK

Room number E380

The Research Complex

Tel: 01707 281148

Fax: 01707 285073

Email: E.K...@herts.ac.uk

Join the BPS Developmental Section mailing list by emailing Subscribe-d...@lists.bps.org.uk