Do pictograms and signs hinder speech?

Many parents worry that using signs and pictograms with their child will delay speech development. Note that their use does not hinder speech development for several reasons:

-The adult's use of signs and images should always be accompanied by speech, so the child always receives verbal input.

-Exposure to signs and pictograms will always be less than exposure to speech. In a typical day, the child will be exposed to speech at daycare or school, on the bus, in stores, on the radio, on television, during phone calls, and during interactions between you and those around you. In all these activities, speech is prioritized, so every day the child is more immersed in a verbal world.

-When functional, speech is much faster than using signs and pictograms. It is also understood by more people and, being spontaneous, it is applicable in many more contexts. When speech becomes functional, it becomes children's first choice; they naturally drop signs and pictograms.

I created a video that summarizes how facilitating it can be to integrate signs and pictograms into everyday life.

What is total communication?

We all use different communication modalities daily. For example: writing for a grocery list, photos in flyers, natural gestures to convey a message to someone across the street or in a noisy environment, pictograms on highway signs or to indicate where restrooms are...

Total communication is the use of various communication modalities to send or receive a message, such as speech, signs, and images.

What is the advantage of using signs and pictograms when speech is not functional?

Before a child can express themselves with words, they often have the ability to use signs, photos, and pictograms to do so. For some, this is just a transitional period, for others, it's a prolonged one. Total communication can therefore be an interesting transitional path for all children, and particularly for some children with intellectual disabilities, autism spectrum disorder, language development disorder, and verbal dyspraxia.

The goal is not to stop speech stimulation, far from it, but rather to allow the child to develop other mediums while waiting for speech to become functional, to maintain interest in communication and continue the development of other communication spheres and encourage social interactions. For example, vocabulary development is perfected through the feedback the child receives from others about their perception of the world. The child who says 'horse' while pointing at a cow will benefit from the adult's feedback indicating the correct vocabulary word. The child who cannot express themselves benefits less from this opportunity to be guided in their learning.

The use of total communication helps to better assess the child's level of comprehension, which allows parents to adjust their expectations for the child... which reduces frustrations on both sides. Having a functional means of communication helps to decrease disruptive behaviors. One must neither underestimate nor overestimate a child's abilities for successful communication.

How can Symbolicone help you?

It is difficult for parents to find material that allows them to integrate these communication modalities. It is even more difficult to learn signs and use them in the heat of the moment. Not to mention that finding pictograms related to the activity can be laborious, and then there is the task of organizing them to be functional for both the parent and the child.

Symbolicone aims to facilitate the introduction of signs and pictograms for parents and professionals by integrating them directly into games. The more the child is exposed to these communication modalities in their daily life, the more meaningful they will become for them. We want to provide you with 'ready-to-use' game options so that you can easily expose the child to different communication modalities.

Symbolicone also uses these mediums to stimulate speech development. For example, in the 'pronunciation' collection books, pictograms guide the child to produce the words in the sentence containing the sounds to be worked on. The game-books also stimulate the combination of words to develop simple sentence structures.

Interesting reference:

Romski, M.A., Sevcik, R.A. (2005). Augmentative communication and early intervention: Myths and realities. Infants & Young Children, Vol.18, No3, pp.174-185.