The need for selection, standardization, and development of signs and manual communication systems for use in the educational setting is discussed. (Author)

A deaf adult argues that total communication as a combination of signs and speech is a fraud from the realistic point of view of a born deaf adult living in a hearing/speaking world. (GW)

During an eight-month treatment regimen utilizing simultaneous sign/speech input, all of the words of a young girl with Down's Syndrome were recorded. Analyses revealed that most of the words she initially signed were later spontaneously spoken and that most of her signed productions evolved into spontaneous spoken productions. (Author/JDD)

Twenty-eight deaf adolescents enrolled in a day-class program for the hearing impaired were administered a battery of four short factual stories using oral, manual, simultaneous, and interpreted modalities of communication. (Author/PHR)

Total communication procedures were used with three severely mentally retarded children (mental ages 2 to 4) to examine the effects of receptive speech on the acquisition and maintenance of manual signing. Signs corresponding to known words were generally acquired faster and retained better than signs corresponding to unknown words. (Author/JW)

The author presents a rationale for a total communication approach (involving speech, speechreading, amplification, writing, sign language, and fingerspelling) in educational programs for deaf persons. (GW)

Discusses learning to read by hearing impaired children and maintains that given a language base (in sign alone, oral and/or signed English), a total communication environment, and the opportunity to utilize various modes to decode written English, it appears likely that hearing impaired children can develop reading and writing skills in English.…

At the Iowa School for the Deaf, five young hearing children (age three years) were integrated into the preschool program to study the development of total communication skills including speech and language patterns. (Author/PHR)

The article considers whether young deaf children of hearing parents should learn American Sign Language (ASL) as their first language and whether teachers in day high school programs should use manual communication. It concludes that, because ASL is the key to deaf culture, it should be used by parents and teachers. (DB)

A review of problems with using such manual communication systems as cued speech, fingerspelling, Signed or Manual English, American Sign Language, and Pidgin Sign provides a rationale for using a combination of American Sign Language and Pidgin Sign and a few markers from Signed English for a Total Communication system. (CB)

Examines the differential mode usage (speech, vocalize, gesture and sign) of profoundly deaf preschoolers and their hearing mothers as a function of their level of communicative competence and method of communication. Relates simultaneous use of modes to higher communicative competence and specific pragmatic types of communication. (Author/MES)

The goal of the Manual/Simultaneous Communication Department (M/SCD) at the National Technical Institute for the Deaf (NTID) is to assist deaf students in developing communication skills. (Author)

A follow-up was done on a 1976 survey of communication trends in schools and programs for the hearing impaired in the U.S. Although a lower response rate made direct comparison of numbers impossible, the percentage of classes using the various communication modes was consistent with the earlier study. (Author/CL)

This study of seven educators of hearing-impaired students in early elementary programs found that teachers' signed Manually Coded English (MCE) messages represented their spoken utterances. MCE proficiency may be influenced by teacher attitude regarding the importance of signing complete messages and the degree to which supervisors monitor…