INTERACTIONS WITH OBJECTS

SUSAN BASHINSKI:
SLIDE 1
Hello, everybody. This is Susan Bashinski. I work in North Carolina at East Carolina University, and I'm really excited about the opportunity to talk with today about interactions with objects. There are lots of considerations about objects, characteristics of objects, how we present objects to learners with deaf-blindness. How we can use objects with these learners to help them better develop communication skills. And, I think, several interesting related topics that we will discuss today. I'm really thrilled to have the chance to talk with you about this on behalf of the Kansas State Deaf-Blind Project. Kansas is still home in my heart, even though I don't live there anymore. So I know lots of the kids on the census in Kansas and so, hopefully, some of this information might help you as educational team members or, perhaps, you as parents of some of these learners with deaf-blindness to learn a few things about how you might use objects, present objects differently to facilitate your child's development. So here we go.
SLIDE 2
All children, regardless of race, color, creed, disability, no disability, part of our earliest development is in regard to learning that objects have quite a large number of different characteristics. With kids who are typically developing, this sort of basic object knowledge and basic concept development begins at birth and it just continues on an ongoing basis because of the constant flow of information that infants and toddlers experience as they grow up. With typically developing kids, most parents, most preschool teachers don't have to directly teach these various aspects and characteristics of objects and object interaction because kids just learn them. It's like they learn them by magic. They learn them by osmosis. They learn them incidentally. But with learners with deaf-blindness, most of these things, if not all of them, need to be directly taught to a child. And if a child with deaf-blindness wasn't taught these things for various reasons, maybe health interfered, teams didn't know what to do, there wasn't enough time, whatever-- until these basic concepts occur, they really are a priority for instruction even if the learner is three years old or five years old or seven years old or eight years old. Kids have to learn about object characteristics and how to interact with them.
SLIDE 3
I got ahead of myself, there it says, "Typically, developing children learn these concepts incidentally. But for the majority of learners with deaf-blindness, they must be directly taught."
SLIDE 4
We could create a pretty lengthy list of the various categories of characteristics about objects. But I think we will cover what's important, what we need to know as we work with our children or children in our classrooms who have deaf-blindness if we talk about these six different aspects of objects. So let's name them and then we'll talk about each of them a little bit. Kids need to learn objects exist, that objects have permanence, that objects are different from one another, that objects have a name, that objects have a variety of different features or different characteristics, and last that objects have a function or a use. So let's go back and one at a time, let's talk about each of these and what they entail just a little bit.
The first one: objects exist. All right. For children who do not have significant vision loss and significant hearing loss, this particular feature is less important because if kids have some distant sensory ability, vision or hearing, just by being alive in the world they are going to receive stimulation from objects to learn that something exists out there. Maybe it has to exist within a six-inch distance of their face for them to see it, or within two feet for them to hear it's auditory features. But if kids have functional, residual vision and, or hearing, knowing that objects exist won't be such a challenge. Now, to have that existence have meaning, will still need instruction and facilitation. But number one, objects existence is absolutely critical. For a learner who has only light vision or is totally blind, and for a learner who has severe to profound hearing loss because - and I think this is especially important with learner's who are blind - those children live inside themselves. They live inside their own bodies.
One of the characteristics of learner's who are blind at very young ages, they typically don't explore the world. They don't reach out. They don't search. They don't crawl, creep. Because they don't know there's a world out there. Part of our biggest challenge-- it's not my phrase, but it's Jan Van Dyke's phrase, only the father of the field of deaf-blindness in a lot of respects. He says we have to invite those children with deaf-blindness, who have significant losses in both sensory channels, we have to invite those children out into the world to live with us and to partner with us. And that's the big challenge is to get those kids to come out of their own bodies, to reach out, to begin to know that there are people and things out there with which they can interact in a variety of ways. Some of the ways they won't like. Some of the ways they will like very much. So we have to start with existence. Okay? Things are separate from the child's own body. I think that's the final aspect. That's kind of a summary comment about objects exist. And they exist separate from the child's self. Okay?
So after we have that notion established we move into something that might be more familiar to many of you and that's the second feature that objects have permanence. And that simply means that things continue to exist even when that learner, that child, can't experience them in some sensory way. Now, in typical child development, you might have heard of this-- you probably have heard of this in terms of object permanence, which means that a child understands that even when something falls off a table or gets hidden under or behind a blanket, that it continues to exist. That's why we play peek-a-boo with typically developing babies or with kids who have some vision. That's why kids will get into a game of knocking things off the table so that you can bend over for the 75th time, and pick it up and put it back on the table. Kids are learning that even when they can't see them, those objects continue to exist. Okay.
The reason I don't want to limit our discussion today to simply that visual aspect of object permanence, is for the learner's with whom you work, your own children, who have significant vision loss. There still is a very important notion about the permanence of objects that needs to be facilitated. And we can do that in terms of thinking about kids who can hear fairly well, even if they're totally blind. We can develop this notion of permanence by helping them realize that even when they can't hear a toy that makes a sound, or even when they can't hear their Daddy's voice they know that Daddy is out there and he has a loud booming voice. But even when he can't hear that voice, Daddy continues to exist. So that's why I said what I did in the way I did. The kids learn things exist even when they can't experience them sensorily in some way.
The third way we could talk about kids learning the permanence of objects is tactilely. Children who have very little functional vision, very little functional hearing, they still have to learn that those objects exist in the world outside of themselves when they can't experience them tactilely. They can't reach out, feel them, touch them. It's really, really challenging. It's like the difficulty at this third level is kicked up a notch when you are trying to help a child who really doesn't have much functional vision or hearing to learn that things can exist at a distance. Because it's really hard, you can't experience things at a distance in tactile form. So you have to be inventive. You have to scaffold experiences for children to gradually separate them from those things at a distance so they learn that permanence of objects, which includes people, places, things, even when they can't experience them tactilely at that very moment. Okay?
I hope that makes sense. This is one if we were having a discussion in the same room, I would say, "Does that make sense? What questions do you have? What do we need to talk about?" So if you have questions among yourselves and you're watching in a group, this would be a good time to pause and have a little conversation about the existence of objects and the permanence of objects because those two are the central core features. Okay?
I would guess that the last four on this list are much more comfortable for you, much more familiar to you. Number three that objects are different from one another. That's a much more familiar, typical, preschool sort of task. Right? Things look different from one another. The way they feel is different. The way they sound is different. That's the basis of having kids do matching and sorting and all the basic match-to-sample tasks that teachers do. And that parents will do if they're having their child sort silverware and they take it out of the dishwasher, or match up the socks when they help take them out of the dryer at home, or put your books on the shelf and put your toys in the toy box. It's all based on this notion of objects being different from one another.
As kids are learning that skill, they are often simultaneously learning that objects have a name. And this is really the seminal point of language, symbolic language, that we can give things, people, places, activities, which we're calling objects, names. We can give them a name through spoken words. We can give them a name through sign language. We can give them a name through braille or written words. But things have a name. And I think, to go along with that, is the idea of, "Oh my goodness. Not only does this cup have a name, 'Cup,' but you call it a cup, and Johnny calls it a cup, and my cousin Billy calls it a cup, and my sister Susie calls it a cup, and my teacher calls it a cup. And 'Holy cow,' everybody calls it by that same name." And as you could imagine, as you're teaching language, as your child is learning language, then it becomes more sophisticated. Well, then we can learn, "Well, maybe somebody calls it a cup, but in the Smith family down the street they call it a glass." But a glass and a cup kind of have some similarities that we'll get to at the end of this list. So objects have a name.
Fifth, objects have a variety of characteristics. Again, I think this is consistent with language development. You know this, parents, from any experiences you've had with other children in your family, with typically developing children. Teachers and school teams, this is instruction 101. Right? You teach colors. You teach numbers. You teach sizes. You teach adverbs. It's fast. It's slow. It's big. It's small. It's in. It's out. All those preposition features. So this notion of characteristics of objects is a huge category. When we make it that far, we are on a roll and we could do a whole new separate webinar just on that one.
Finally, that objects have a function or use. And this is where I have a little bit of a hard time because some of these things, especially these last three, they're not necessarily in a hierarchical order. They really happen concurrently. That as kids learn that objects have names, it's very critically important for them to learn that objects have a function. They exist for a reason. There is something we do with them. This thing with the hard plastic handle and bristles on the end that my mom puts in my mouth, "Oh, it's called a toothbrush. It has a name. Oh, okay." But it's for the reason of getting the gunk off of my teeth, to help me brush my teeth. Or, "Hey, this ball that jiggles and wiggles and makes noise and flashes lights, it's fun. I can use it to play. And I can use this bumble ball, I can use it to entertain myself and make me feel happy because it's so much fun to play with." So function or use is really what that object, person, whatever, will do for that learner. It isn't limited solely to the notion of functional like, "Brush your teeth. Comb your hair. Make a milkshake. Cook your food. That kind of thing." It's a general use, which can be entertainment. It can be aggravation. I can always do something by-- ripping up the magazine can make somebody mad at me. But it's useful because it gets me attention or whatever. So this is very broad. It isn't necessarily positive functional use in terms of daily living. Okay?
Long slide. But that's the power-packed one, right there. I think if you get lost in anything else we're saying today, I would really encourage you to go back to this slide and refer to this about object existence, permanence, differences between objects, objects have names and, "Oh, everybody uses the same name, they have characteristics, and they have uses. All right. Let's move on.
SLIDE 5
In addition to learning all of what I'm referring to as those "basic object concepts," many children who experience deaf-blindness also can be taught to understand objects as a formal cue, as a very structured, organized cuing system to learn about the people, places, things, that go on in their lives. In school, at home, in the community. So the next place we're going to go in terms of our conversation today about objects is to talk about objects used as formal cues. Okay?
SLIDE 6
And the reason we do this, the reason this is such a valuable piece of knowledge, is that if we use objects to do what I call augment the input for a learner, we really are facilitating that learner's communication development in so many ways. What we're really doing if we augment learning-- pardon me. We augment input for a learner, we are building that learner's understanding of communication. We call it receptive communication. We're helping that learner understand what is going on with a thing in an activity. We're going to start putting words or manual signs to those activities. So this facilitates the child's acquisition of the naming, and characteristic, and functional aspects of objects. I like to think of augmenting input as "talking with more than your mouth." So when you augment input for a learner with deaf-blindness you "talk" to that learner with your hands, with your facial expression, with your movement, with other objects, with the way you touch him or her. You're going to provide a lot of sources that give information to the child that are not limited to only the words you might use.
So the way we're going to talk about doing this is you need to match two things in particular, two categories, to your particular learner, to your particular child in your family. You want to match the input features of the object cues or whatever else you might use - we're focusing on object cues today - to the learner's ability. Okay? Go back to that. We also want to match the feedback, or the response we give, or the reaction we give to the learner to the learner's abilities. So we say, "Okay. Learner's abilities. What learner's abilities. What sorts of abilities must we consider?"
SLIDE 7
In particular, we want to consider the learner's sensory ability and motor ability. All right? Motor ability is particularly important when we're talking about objects and using objects as cues to add to meaning for children or young adults. Because if we're going to use objects we need to try to ensure that the kind of objects we select are those that the learner can actively explore independently-- that's our goal, that the learner has the hand control, one hand control, foot control, some part of his or her body that has good volitional movement so that he can explore it independently. That's ideal. The premier choice is hands. If kids can explore an object with one or more hands then we are golden. That's exactly what we want. But with many learners, many of your own children, many of the children with whom you work on teams, in addition to their label of deaf blindness, they are challenged by motor difficulties. Some of these kids' motor challenges are very significant, others are mild, probably the whole spectrum. So if we have a learner who can't grasp things and release them or he can grasp them but not if they're very heavy-- they have to be really lightweight-- so they have strength or whatever the features are. We need to try to find objects we're going to use with which and inter-- pardon me-- with which a learner can interact in some meaningful way. Maybe it's just a matter of sort of batting at something to get the feel of the texture or touching something to see how it moves or doesn't move. Again, the idea when we're using objects to help kids learn about objects is to either have the child explore them in one or both hands independently or if we can assist through hand-under-hand instruction to help the learner explore manually but sometimes we just don't have that luxury. so there's always the second caveat of at least try to find objects with which the learner can interact in a meaningful way.
The second one on your slide is the idea of sensory ability-- I think I talked about that a little bit earlier-- that's both in terms of vision skill and auditory skill. You don't want to choose objects to be the focus of your interaction with a learner that only have really cool auditory features if the kid is profoundly deaf and doesn't a cochlear implant. Kid can't hear them. It's like, "Hello. That's not a good match." We don't want to choose objects that have amazing visual features-- I know with my son he loved shiny things. Shiny, glittery, sparkly. Well that's because he could see them. And lots of times those kinds of objects are great but not if the child can't see well enough to discern those features. So this is what I'm talking about when I say-- I know I'm backing up but what must you consider? You've got to think about how you're going to choose and build object cues for both input and feedback so they match what you're particular child, your particular learner can process in a meaningful way.
SLIDE 8
It's very important to consider a learner's preferences when you're selecting an object to be used as an object cue. Almost all children, if you explore widely enough, if you do enough experiments, enough probes with different kind of objects, you can find something they like the way it feels. Some kids absolutely love gooey things, Play-Doh and slime and Jell-O and finger paint, and if their hands are in those things, they're happy kids. Other children, I'm sure some of you might be laughing now. You think, "Oh, man. I can't get my kid's hand, one finger, to even go into finger paint or Play-Doh or anything slimy." That's exactly what I'm talking about. Not that you would necessarily be limited only to those items that I happened to mention, but if you're trying to find an object cue for lunch, for example, that it's time to eat. We're going to go over to this particular table where we always have lunch, and we're going to eat. Well, if you have a placemat that has kind of a slimy Dycem or some kind of a slimy, soft texture to it, you don't want a piece of that placemat to be the object cue because ooh, it has that slimy, gooey, what some kids would say is a nasty feel, like slime and finger paint and that kind of thing. So choose something that's very much contrasted from that. Get a different placemat. Get some Rubbermaid, that soft Rubbermaid pliable plastic shelf paper and cut a placemat in the kid's favorite shape, and maybe those bumps would be something the kid would like, or something hard, or whatever the child uses.
To try to put this in a context with other words you might've heard about your own child, maybe somebody has said, "Well, your child is very tactilely defensive." That's a term that a lot of folks like to use in a clinical sense, and that just means that when your child touches certain things, their reaction, his or her reaction, is to pull back from it in dislike, maybe even to scream in protest because it just is so aversive sensorally to that child. So this is what I'm talking about when I say please consider the preferences. Yes, motorability. Yes, visuability. Yes, auditoriability. But bottom line, what does your child like? What does your young teenager like? Very, very important. And in big, bright red print it says always-- and this is an always. I don't say always or never very often, but this is an always. Always avoid the use of miniatures as object cues when you're trying to build interactions with a learner who is blind or has a very, very significant vision loss. Okay?
I think you all have, at some point, seen memory boxes where you have a little, tiny blender, maybe, or a little, tiny TV set, or a little, tiny school bus. Matchbox cars are great examples of miniatures. Think for a minute. Why does that matchbox car or that little miniature school bus have meaning to you? Why does that little blender that's an inch and a half tall have meaning to you? Well, the reason is it visually matches the real one. It visually matches the big one, the giant one. For a child who has no visual referent to the world, that miniature bus, that miniature blender isn't going to mean a thing. So we want to try to find features that might have more meaning to the learner, and we're going to talk about those.
SLIDE 9
Okay. Moving on. Let's take a much closer example, a more in-depth examination of an object cue. And this is a definition I like to use. I've probably stolen part of it from books I've read, and some of it, I just made up. An object cue is an object or a part of an object - I have some pictures for you and some examples - that is used to refer to a person, place, thing, or activity. Right? An object or a part of an object.'
SLIDE 10
Why do we use them? Why am I suggesting to you, you might want to think about using object cues with one of the learners with who you work? The purpose of an object cue is to provide a concrete means of supporting interaction, words, the way we talk to each other, the way I'm talking to you right now. Think for a moment, close your eyes and pretend you're not looking at the screen or actually close your eyes and don't look at the screen. And I would say, "The purpose of an object cue is to provide a concrete means of supporting conversational interactions and facilitating language development." Now, before you open your eyes, you go, "Whoa. That's too many words. You said them too fast." They're very transient in time. I can't recapture them. The only way that you would be able to recapture those words would be if you could say, "Susan, can you repeat that? Tell me again," because the words fly by. Well, when you are talking with your child, when you as a teacher, paraprofessional, are talking to a child in the classroom, if all you do is talk, and that particular learner, one, might not have very good hearing, so he could-- let's just leave it at that [laughter]. Might not have very good hearing, and you talk even if you're saying, "Time to get up. Time to go home. Time to get your backpack. Go get your backpack. Let's get in line to go home." Those words are flying by that child because that's not familiar until that child learns that language, all right? So we try to make it more concrete. Now, open your eyes if you haven't done so already [laughter]. I'm sorry I hope we didn't lose anybody to a nap there.
I am giving you one sort of really peripheral-- I'm giving you a definite cue. I have a hard time saying it's an object cue, but I'm giving you a visual cue because you have the screen. So now if I were to read that, that I just read before when your eyes were closed, the purpose of an object cue is to provide a concrete means of supporting conversational interactions and facilitating language development. If you still go, "Swoo," when you just hear me, you can go back. You're able to go back and scan the words and read the words. And you have a concrete representation of what I'm saying because print is meaningful to you and you can process it again and again and again, re-reading until it makes sense, okay?
Well, for the kids who need to learn that objects have names, that objects have uses, that objects have characteristics, print isn't the way we were going to be able to go because they don't have that skill yet. So we have to find another way to provide a concrete means to support interaction, and that's through using the objects as cues in the way we're going to examine next.
We're going to talk about how you can use objects to support a conversation, how you can use objects to support a social interaction. And through all of this process, you truly will be facilitating your child's or that learner's communication development.
SLIDE 11
S1 00:00	All right. So before we talk about what they look like-- I show you what they look like-- talk about how you might choose them in a little more detail, we need to talk for a minute about how you make them. How do you construct object cues, all right? This is a repeat of something that came before. It's very important to remember that an object cue is used to refer to or to represent an object or person, place, thing, activity. As such, the cue must in some way be differentiated, be separated from the object itself, right? So if a child has a favorite DVD, you're not going to use that actual DVD itself as the cue for watching that DVD because you've got a conflict. How can it be a cue when it is the actual thing? And, hello, we're trying to separate, or in the professional literature it's called distance, the label or the representation for the object from the object itself. So we need two things going on. We can't use the exact, actual object as the cue for the object, right? If the child has a very favorite drinking glass in the kitchen and part of what is so cool about it, it has two handles, one on either side, that are coded with some super soft, squishy foam rubber. And your daughter loves that cup because of the way she can handle it with both hands and squish on that rubber, but that cup itself can't become the cue, or the referent-- pardon me, I said that wrong. That's wrong. It can't become the cue or the representation for the cup. We're going to have to find some of that magic foam that could be the cue for the cup, or we're going to have to find a second cup that's just like it and break it apart and have one of those handles be the cue for that cup, or cut off the top of the cup and have that be the cue for the cup. Hopefully this gives you a preview of where we're going. We have to have something, maybe it's another exact cup that we're going to use. And I show you how that will be done in a minute. But we have to have two things when we're talking about a cue, all right? And whatever the cue is, whatever the representation is, you need to mount on something. Now I've said here mount on poster board. There's nothing magical about poster board. You could mount it on foam core board. You could mount it on heavy-duty cardboard. You could mount it on very thin wood. You can mount it on anything you want, but it just needs to not be existing in space like the actual object exists in space. The cue needs to be mounted somehow, and I would suggest to you you need to cut these to a standard size. So if I'm going to use a set of some object cues with a little girl in my class, let's say we're going to start with five object cues, I want to cut five pieces of the poster board or five pieces of the foam core board all the same size because that is another way to emphasize to this little girl that this is systematic. This is structured. This is organized. All these things that people are putting in my hands or helping me explore with my hands that then make something appear to me, they're all kind of the same. They're all about the same size, and they're mounted on-- the background is the same. It's only the object piece part or whatever that's glued or fastened to the poster board or the foam core board that is different. And that's the message we're trying to make.
S1 04:08	Now if you have object cues for more than one kid in your class, I'm not saying you have to necessarily use a standard size for the background for the mount for every child. If this little girl whom I just mentioned-- let's call her Sally-- if she has really good motor skills, she has good control, use of both hands, explores a lot of things tactilely, she likes things with little details, her object cues might be able to be really small. They might intrigue her more if they're small. She'll get curious if she really has to be careful and poke around with her little fingers, and she's young. Let's say she's five. So her hands are pretty small. So the standard size for the mounts of her object cues might be two inches by two and a half inches or three inches by three inches. But maybe there's another kid in your class who's very large for his age. Let's say he's eleven years old. Not a real good class if a five year old and eleven year old are in the same class, but go with me on this. Maybe you work in a resource setting so kids aren't in there at the same time. I don't know. I'm trying to make the point an eleven year old boy, he's a big boy. His hands are thick, his hands are large, and he has some degree of cerebral palsy. One of his hands he really can't open very much by himself at all. His other hand he does not have good motor skill. He has poor coordination. Well these little bitty object cues on these two by two and a half inch squares of foam core board aren't going to work for this young man. His might need to be four inches by four inches. But then for this young man, Matt, all of Matt's object cue mounts need to be the same standard size for him, okay? Hopefully that makes sense.
SLIDE 12
Then, here's the steps. Piece of cake. When you're going to make some object cues to work with a learner in your class, to work with your child in your home, you're going to choose the objects. You're going to cut the poster board, foam core, cut the mounting pieces to that standard size. You're going to glue one object to one individual piece of the mounting material. Those are the requirements, okay? Four and five are optional. Six is another requirement most of the time, not always. If you can, on number four, you want to use some sort of sealer, some sort of Mod Podge, some sort of clear glue, some sort of something to coat the object and the mounting board just so that it will make it more durable. It will keep it from being damaged by drool or spilled juices or food. It just makes the object cue system last longer. Five, let it dry. Six, you might want to use VELCRO on the back because then you have more versatility on how you might mount or display or arrange these object cues.
SLIDE 13
It's very important on the back of the mounting board, the poster board, to clearly write the meaning that that cue represents. If they are standard-- let's go back to the little girl's two handled soft, spongy foam on the handles favorite drinking cup. You probably are saying, "Why do I have to write 'favorite cup' on the back of that board?" Because most everybody who interacts with that learner will know that's a cup, that you call it a cup, and it's her favorite one. But what if there's a brand new babysitter or a brand new childcare worker or a substitute teacher and the parent is gone in the classroom that day? Again, that's a little bit of a stretch, I understand that, but as you'll see as we look at the picture I have for you here in a few minutes, some of the symbols or the object cues are going to be much more abstract. So you might need to write on there, "This represents 'I love you,'" or for kids who are working on some early language skills, "This represents Monday as a day of the week," or anything that might be misinterpreted or have more than one meaning. Writing the word for what the object should represent on the back is not there for the benefit of the child or the young adult who uses the object cues to learn about the world. The meaning is written on the back for the partners, the parents, the teachers, the service providers who are interacting with that child, with that young adult, okay?
If possible, you want to select things to be used as object cues that are small. Again, with Matt-- Matt's got big hands, poor motor control-- they need to be bigger, but that's not an arbitrary decision to make them big. Go back to what I said several slides ago. You must make object cues in consideration of a learner's motor and sensory abilities. That prevails first and foremost. With that in mind-- back to this slide-- if possible, you want to reduce the size of the object cues as much as you can.
You want to select objects to be used as cues if they have some kind of relationship to what it stands for. Like I said with-- I can't remember what I called your daughter. Did I call her Sally? With her favorite two handle drinking cup with soft sponge handles-- using another handle from a cup or that foam that covers the handle there's an obvious tactile relationship. If you have a favorite swing on the playground at school or in your backyard at home that has the yellow rope that is like a water ski rope, and those are the pieces of rope that suspend the string from the tree or the bar on the gym or whatever it is. And your child loves to swing in that swing. Using a piece of that particular type of rope and, if the child has visual skills, using a piece of that yellow rope to represent, "I want to go swing. I want to go get on that swing." Because there is an obvious tactile relationship with the way that ski rope feels, and you've got value added because you also chose the same color.
SLIDE 14
So let's talk about some examples. We've been very theoretical. Let's talk about some specifics. Object cues may be whole objects. Object cues may be parts of objects. So let's examine those things. Examples of actual objects or whole objects that you might mount on some kind of board. You might mount a glass and probably should have called it a cup, a plastic cup, a two-handled sippy cup, to mean, "Lunch. Let's go to the table." You might have some kind of a bag that's going to mean, "Get your things. Time to go home." You might use a sock to mean, "It's time to get dressed now."
One of my favorites that I've used with a lot of different kids, bubble wrap. The packing material that has the air captured in the little bubbles. And I don't know about you, but when I open those packages, I love to pop those bubbles. I don't know why. Sounds fun. Feels funny. I don't know. But it's something that I think many, many people do. They get a piece of bubble wrap in their hand and they start popping the bubbles. Well, I often use that when I've built object cue systems for learners to mean, "Take a break." The notion of, "Take a break," it's very abstract. Right? How are you going to signify, "Okay. You've worked really hard for 30 minutes. Now, you can take a break." Or, "Okay. You've done all your homework since you got home from school. Now, you can take a break." Or, "Wow. You cleared the table off from our dinner. You're finally done with that task. Take a break." How are you going to make that concrete because the object cues make things concrete? So you can mount a piece of bubble wrap on a mounting board. And then after it all gets popped to death, then you replace it with some new bubble wrap that still has some popping power. Nothing magical about that. If you have something else you like, you may use that.
SLIDE 15
And here are some pictures of what whole object cues or actual object cues might look like. When I was talking with you, I gave the example of mounting things on four-inch by four-inch squares. Or mounting things on a two-inch by two and a half-inch rectangle. All those are options. You may also choose to mount things on ovals, mount things on triangles. At the very end of this presentation, you'll see that for kids with more well-developed communication and language abilities, you may start to change the shape of the mounting board, change the shape of the poster board, the foam core, whatever it is, to indicate certain categories of activities. Okay? So I just wanted to show you it doesn't really matter what you choose initially as long as the mounting board you use for one particular learner or for your own particular child is always the same. And here I used an actual piece of soap to represent we're going to bathe now. If you don't use bar soap, you do not want to use this kind of an object cue. If you use liquid soap, if you use soap on a rope, if you use a bath mitt that you put liquid soap on but you don't use bar soap, this would be a poor cue. If you use bar soap in the shower or in the bath, then you would call it shower for the back. These are the labels that could be off the back. You want to choose things that match that particular learner's experience.
SLIDE 16
Let's do the same thing and talk about examples of object cues if we're going to use partial objects or parts of objects and take a look at what some of those might appear like. Parts of objects: a plastic bottle like a bottle of juice, a bottle of soda, a bottle of water, any of those things that you might use the top of one of those plastic bottles to mean, "Lunch. Go to the table." Okay? If your child has a backpack that she takes to school everyday or for classroom staff if the kids in your class bring backpacks you might get a piece of a backpack strap that hopefully feels somewhat the same as the child's own backpack to mean, "Get your things to go home." You might use a part of a zipper-- and I even have a picture of one of this for you-- to mean, "It's time to get dressed." And I hope that you might remember these first three examples are the same meaning examples I used with whole object cues because I think it's important to emphasize to you it's not important whether you choose a whole object cue or a partial object cue by the meaning for which the cue stands. You could use that whole cup to say, "Lunch. Go to the table." You could use the whole sock to mean, "It's time to get dressed." It's whatever might have the most meaning to your child, to that particular young adult with whom you're working. If part of the getting dressed activity-- or you might be working on getting clothes back in order after toileting at school, and the skill on which you're focusing with a particular learner is learning to zip up his own pants. Then a partial zipper might really be a great object cue because that's the focus of attention in that activity that says, "Get yourself put back together after you use the bathroom," kind of thing. I didn't really have a good idea or one that I liked nearly so well for, "Take a break," with a partial object. So I did another, kind of a fun-- or what I think could be interpreted for many kids as a fun, leisurely, relaxing kind of activity-- is maybe we could take a walk. So maybe you could use a feather that you one time found when you were walking. And you could use a bird feather, which is a part of a bird, to mean, "Let's go for a walk outside."
SLIDE 17
Here would be some examples of partial object cues. In this particular instance I used the part of the zipper, which is on the left, to mean get your coat. We're going to put on your coat or your jacket. Again, whatever the people in the child's life call that garment is what would be written on the back so that some people aren't calling it a hoodie, and some people calling it a jacket, some people calling it a coat. Everybody wants to call it the same thing when your child or the young adult is learning language. Later we can diversify the language but when you're first learning language we need to use the same words. A birthday candle could be glued. It's part of the whole construct of birthday. Birthday cake, birthday presents. Picked candle to represent birthday because usually if you have a cake for another occasion you don't necessarily have candles. I didn't choose presents for birthday because you have presents at your holiday celebrations. At Mother's Day, Father's Day, Grandparents' Day, whatever you may celebrate. But birthday candles are pretty unique to birthdays so I thought that was a good choice. Boots. You could use the actual shoelaces or the bootlaces. The whole things. Tie them in a knot. Tie them in a bow. That sounds like a song. I'm not going to start to sing I promise. But you could use the actual laces from the child's-- get an extra pair from the child's boots, shoes. You want the texture-- you want the way it feels to be the same even if your child can see, that tactile relationship is very important because the child will be exploring the object cues tactually.
SLIDE 18
This is much more abstract than using whole objects or parts of objects. You may use features of objects. And that is really what I was sharing with you when I was exemplifying the rope for the swing in the backyard and these kinds of things. Now, hopefully, it puts it in more of an organized structure. If your child always wears socks with a certain kind of weave, instead of trying to glue the whole sock or the toe of the sock or whatever on the object cue mount you could just take an old sock that's got holes in it and instead of throwing the whole thing away, cut apart the sock and use a piece of that texture to represent socks. I've done a lot of things with this sort of application and been pretty pleased with it. The one on the right is a really far stretch for me. I have not personally had a lot of success with this but I know some people have and some people try it. So I wanted to share it with you as a possibility. It's going to depend on your own child, the young adult in your class. But you could try to simulate what a salad would feel like. It would have a bunch of different textures on some kind of a plate or bowl. So you could have something that tries to simulate the shredded lettuce or the piece of chicken or whatever might be on the salad.
SLIDE 19
Then we get really abstract. And for many children who are still learning objects exist, they're permanent, they have names-- this level of application of object cues is not appropriate. That's not to say it might not be appropriate one day. Certainly it might. But until the young adult, the child has firmly established that objects exist separate from himself, they're permanent, they have names, we all use the same name, they have characteristics, they have uses-- this is too abstract. But for many kids who have very significant vision and hearing losses but do have language, do have sign language, and you need some tactual supports for some of their sign language or to support very abstract sings, you might do things like this. Again, you see differences in what the background mount might look like. February. If the child can see at all using the red in the heart pipe cleaner for Valentine's Day. February sort of has this notion that it's a red month, so maybe that is helpful. The middle one-- this would be very inappropriate, in my opinion, for a child with vision because the white rope part on the white background mount very, very difficult to see. But for kids who don't see, who process this only through texture-- doesn't matter about the coloring-- and having that shape can-- Again, it's very conventional that a heart signifies love. How many bumper stickers, how many commercials on TV, "I heart poodles. I heart diet Coke. I heart soccer," whatever it is, which means, "I love that thing." All right? Now before we go to the one on the right, if you look at the image on your left and the image in the middle, I would never, myself, suggest to you that you would use these two symbols in one learner's system. They're too close. They're too similar. A heart pipe cleaner to mean February and a heart rope on a heart shape to mean love, they're too similar. And I think if you have a learner where you're going to have that diverse of vocabulary you need to change one of those symbols up.
Let's look at the one on the right. This is an example of a symbol set that I share with you later from the Texas School for the Blind and Visually Impaired. They're the very, very sophisticated set of symbols. They call them tactile symbols. They don't call them object cues or texture cues. They call them tactile symbols. And they have them in eight different categories, and they use this background with what looks like netting. That is used for any concept that has to do with time. So everything about a day of the week, a month of the year, time of day, those would be on mounts that have that netting. So it's a separate tactile cue for categorious meaning. So if we were going to build a cue for February in this full tactile symbol set that's on the right, the February cue would be on a net as well, right? Because it's a time-based concept. Very abstract. This is for the small percentage of learners who are not so challenged intellectually as many, many of the learners on the Kansas Census are, but we don't want to forget those kids.
SLIDE 20
Considerations in using object cues. We're starting to wind this up here. We're almost done. Considerations in using the cues. You want to share the object cue with the learner. You want to touch it with her, handle it with her, try to engage in interaction with her even if it's just passing the cue back and forth. It helps reinforce, "It exists. I'm over here. You give it to me and it doesn't go, poof, disappear like a fairy. It still exists because 'Woah' I'm going to have a social interaction with you and I'm going give it back to you." If we ramp that up a level or two then we can start to interact and have a "conversation" about what it is that that object cue refers to, what it stands for. If we're passing back and forth the object cue about the bumble ball then bye-gosh when you give that cue to me, I'm going to go get the bumble ball so you can play with it.
Or let's go back to what the cue is for your child's favorite DVD at home. Maybe it's part of the case that the DVD comes in. Maybe when you bought that favorite DVD about whatever it is that your child might like, the Backyardigans or Shrek or something, maybe on that case, to help your child differentiate it, you put a switch that would sing the first words of the Backyardigans song. Or it would-- what was the second example that I used? I forgot. I didn't write it down. If you were to have something visually, tactilely that would be a representation of the characters in that movie, you could use that as the cue on the mounting board. And when your child gives you that cue it's like, "Oh, you want to watch the Backyardigans. Okay. Let's go get that movie. Let's go get that movie and we'll watch the Backyardigans." And have your child hold that object cue if she can. If she can't hold it independently, put it in some kind of a bag with a strap that you put over her arm that she goes and carries with you when you go to the shelf to get the Backyardigans movie. And when you find the movie, pull the object cue out. Pass it back and forth, and talk about that's that Backyardigans movie that you want to watch.
SLIDE 21
There are lots of advantages to object cues. They require only a simple motor response from your child, from the learner. It's not sophisticated. The motor response can be prompted through hand under hand support. You can help the learner move through the process of handling, exploring the object cue, and giving it to another person. To say, "Hey. I want this thing. I want to see this. I want this to drink. I want this to eat." Object cues provide concrete communication. The concrete communication form that lasts in time so much more than the quick words that go by when I just speak them to you. We call that a static communication form. It continues to exist. It doesn't change with every word that flies out of my mouth. There's relatively low demand, not only in terms of motor requirements, but there's relatively low demand on a learners cognitive skills. You can match the cues in terms of their level of concreteness or abstractness on a learners level of intellectual development. Object cues have a relatively low demand on memory because "Woah. Here it is. I can put it back in your hand and help you explore it. You don't have to hold it in your mind." Object cues have low demand in terms of representational or language skills because they have concrete shared features with the real objects. And over time you may make object cues for a particular learner more abstract.
SLIDE 22
There are disadvantages. Sometimes it's really tough to pick out what kind of an object, part of an object. Maybe even texture might be really challenging. It's really hard to figure out what might be a best referent for something. It's like, "I picked my brain a lot to try to figure out how do I put something on a mount to say, 'Let's take a break.'" Maybe that's why I'm so proud of my bubble wrap idea because it took me so long to come up with it. I don't know. It is impossible to find objects that directly, intuitively represent really complex ideas. Things that are abstract. You have to try to make things up. You have to be creative and you do the best you can to find connections where you can.
Another disadvantage of object cues is they're not a conventional way to communicate. People aren't used to that. So people who interact with your child, who interact with those particular learner's might not use the object cues in the way you intended. They might not use the object cues in a consistent manner because it is not conventional.
And finally, one of the most difficult, most challenging aspects of using objects cues, especially if you have a lot of them, is "Woah," portability. Getting them to stay with your child, stay with the learner, always be available. Portability. Storage. Huge, huge issue.
SLIDE 23
So this is one website that is great for storage ideas for object cues. You might visit www.objectsymbol.com. I checked it out today. It has a ton of other information about object cues. How you make them. How you use them. But this is one of the best sites that I've ever found in terms of ideas for how you store the object cues to keep them together. To make them portable.
SLIDE 24
Just a very few strategies for how you use object cues to interact with your child. Consider the learner's preferences in terms of how you're going to offer it to her. If your child has good use of left hand, but not right, then you always want to offer the object from the left to her left hand. If the learner in your class has difficulty crosses midline, you always want to offer the object at midline. You don't want to challenge the learner too much or have too high; a motor demand when what you're trying to do here with object cuing is facilitate communication development. So you want to keep motor demand low. You want to keep sensory demand low because the communication demand is high. That's what the learner is trying to begin to understand right now. Sometimes, you can offer an object by touching a learner's body part and see what happens. Wait to see if the child reacts. Maybe negatively, maybe positively. If your child really loves soft things and likes to put her cheek on something to explore it, maybe that's where you first offer the object cue. Touch it to her cheek. Or her left knee. Or her right elbow. Or her right hand. Whatever parts she really likes the way things feel. If necessary, repeat the offer. When you make an offer by touching something to a child's hand, touching something to a child's cheek and you get a negative response, then accept that and offer a different object cue.
SLIDE 25
It's very, very important to never force a learner to accept an object cue. It's important to never force a learner to actively engage in exploring one. You want to offer your hands to do hand-under-hand exploration, but you don't want to get into a tug-of-war wrestling match to get the child to explore the object. That learner's telling you, "Something about this isn't right for me." Maybe it's the way it feels. Maybe it's the size. Maybe it's something else. Maybe I just need to go to the bathroom. Maybe I just am really uncomfortable. I need to get out of my chair. But we need to explore the situation to find out why it's not being accepted. Lots of times it's the actual features of the object cues themselves.
Do tactile modeling. Just like you model other things through other senses. You do tactile modeling and show the learner-- especially at first when object cues are being introduced kids need to learn how to explore them.
SLIDE 26
There is a great website. I really like it a lot. Some of the information that is embedded in the information I've shared with you today comes from this website listed on your screen right now. The spacing got messed up. I apologize. It looks kind of sloppy, but it's the website for Project SALUTE. It's based in California. SALUTE standing for successful adaptations for learning to use objects effectively, SALUTE. And on the project SALUTE website, if you will click on the link, "What we've learned," and under that when you get a new screen click on, "Information sheets." Lots of fabulous information. Very practical, useful information for families and school teams about objects, object interactions, learning to use object cues, making object cues, and a lot of the topics we've covered today.
Okay, I think we're finished. I hope that this has been useful to you as you work with your own child, as you work with the children with deaf-blindness and other multiple challenges in your classrooms. You can always contact the staff of the Kansas deaf-blind project if you have questions, and if they want to do that-- pardon me. If they can answer, that's fabulous, but if they want to put you in contact with me they may do that. That's where I was trying to go with the last sentence. And I'll be more than happy to try to explain things about which I've talked today. And I thank you very much for your kind attention. Bye-bye.