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\f0\fs22 \cf0 INTERACCIONES CON EL TACTO\
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\cf0 SUSAN BASHINSKI:\
SLIDE 1\
I'm excited to be able to share with you this communication mapping process. I think it's a very, very effective way of completing an informal assessment with a learner, regardless of that learner's level of communication abilities.\
SLIDE 2\
I think that, as you see on your screen right now, there are two main goals that a communication mapping process can help an educational team accomplish. The first one is that when it's completed as suggested, the map provides a very quick visual profile of a learner's current communication skills. And I think that's a wonderful advantage, because communication is such a complex area, involves receptive skills, expressive skills, communication in tense, what a kid is doing vocally, verbally. So many variables are involved. And the map, as you'll see here in our webinar today, does give you an at-a-glance profile of each of those areas of communication. Secondly, and this is probably even more beautiful about a communication map, it will provide both a-- pardon me. Both a short-term road map, and a way to plan for long-term goals, objectives, targets, for a learner's communication program. If it's done correctly, a map can be completed by an IEP team, updated annually, and really used throughout the duration of a learner's educational program. I think it's most appropriate that a team complete the communication map, as you will see. I think this is not one of the strategies that the Kansas [inaudible] project would suggest be used only at home. It's really a team collaborative kind of approach to informal assessment, as I think you will see. But it does provide an excellent direction for the team that includes the learner's parents.\
SLIDE 3\
So this is what the communication map looks like. I will tell you there are-- excuse me. There are two different communication maps. This one is the first of the two. This one is the one that is, in my opinion, most useful because it includes all the aspects of non-symbolic communication. All of the pre-linguistic kind of skills that really provide a firm foundation for communication development. There is a second communication map that picks up where this one leaves off in terms of the development of more sophisticated communication skills. And that one will be available through the Kansas Deafblind Project if you have a learner, a child, a teenager who tops out on this one. The process you would use for the second map is the same. We've chosen today to only talk about the first map in detail. But the skills you will use, the processes you will you use to complete this map can be transferred over to the second one if your team would be interested in using that. On this particular slide, you'll see a dark diagonal line that runs from upper left down to about the middle of the page on the right. And everything above that line represents different aspects of receptive communication: the natural context cues, tactile cues, object cues, gesture cues, miniature objects, speech, written words, braille. Those are all forms-- yes, those may be used expressively. Many of those may be used expressively. But in this portion of the map, those cells are going to be completed to represent what the learner does receptively in each of those areas.\
The second major area of the map is a triangle lying on its side with its broad end at the left where it says communication intense and it narrows to a point near the right side of the page in between the two bolder black lines. And those are the indications of communication intent or communication function. It might be more familiar to you to say, "Oh, those are the reasons that a learner would communicate." And that's exactly right. This is the section of the map that says a learner wants to request interaction, request continuation, call attention to herself, protest, ask for assistance, make a comment, request information. Those are the communicative intents that are shown on the map. And the team will record in that section to show what a child's current skills and projected targets are.\
The third and fourth areas of the communication map are those that appear below the bottom line of that side-ways triangle. And you'll see that those two - parts three and four - are separated by a dark diagonal line that extends from left to right as well. In the part of the remaining section of the map where it's almost a complete triangle lying on its side pointing to the left, those are forms of expressive communication that don't involve sound production. Children can communicate through their behaviors or behavior state. Movements. Touching a person or an object, manipulating a person or an object, shifting their gaze, extending an object, pointing and so on across the page. Those are expressive forms of communication that don't involve that learner producing sound. The final section which is also an expressive communication section is the trapezoidal form at the very bottom of the map. The narrow about half-inch wide section that starts with cooing laughing, vocal play, jargon, proto-words, extended vocabulary. All of those involve expression, yes. Communication expression but through sound. Either vocalizations or when you get to the actual word portions, verbalizations.\
So that's the basic way the map is laid out. The course is indicated in the upper left. It's important to always document the learner's name. I think it's also helpful to document who's filling the map out. And the dates as shown on this form simply indicate pre and post which says, "Well, you're going to do it once and then at some later date, you're going to do it again. You as a team I would suggest, as I said earlier, this could be done multiple times using the same map because if you use it year after year after year in addition to providing a roadmap for where a team is going with a learners educational program in the area of communication, it's also going to give you a visual of where you've been. It's a way to document visually progress a learner has made. And with many learners with deaf-blindness, remembering, recalling, reminding ourselves and reminding families of progress a learner has made can be critically important and sometimes we have to look back over several months or even years to see progress because the kids' gains are slow.\
At the bottom left of the mapping page is the legend. There is nothing absolute about using the colors as suggested there. I still, however, think it's wise if your team could use those colors simply because then maps that you would do and maps that other educational teams might do would be interchangeable. If you're all using colors the same way the information would be more readily understood or more easily understood if a learner transfers from one school or school district to another. This is the legend that was suggested by [inaudible] when she first this communication mapping process. And I've just stuck with it because it makes sense to me. So on this first slide, I've indicated with color cues for you the way that we will mark the map. Anything that a learner does currently at the first assessment - the initial pre-assessment - you would mark in red. And the that you would indicate the learner's accomplishment or mastery in a certain set of skills is by making diagonal lines in the cell on the map. And you'll see that in just a moment. I'm going to illustrate each of these for you as we proceed through this webinar.\
The second type of marking a team can make on the map is to be done in green. And as you'll see on the legend, green dots are used in a box in a cell on the map to indicate anything that could be a reasonable IEP goal for a learner. The bottom line of an IEP goal is the intention that it's likely the learner could master or at least make very significant progress toward mastery of that particular skill in one year's time. The third mark in the legend is the blue mark and it involved making a blue frame around the perimeter of the cell in the map and what this notation is used to indicate is that we really think this is not a skill on which we as a team will work with this learner this particular academic year. However, we really think it's a reasonable goal for this learner for some point in the future - maybe two-years down the line, maybe five, maybe eight. It does not have a timeline on it. When you use the blue notation the team is not indicating any particular time frame simply saying, "This is a reasonable goal. We believe with what we know about this learner at this point in time, we believe it is a reasonable goal for the future."\
The final notation in the legend is black and as you'll see in the lower left, it involved making a black X through a particular cell on the map. And this is used to indicate that that particular skill is not believed to be a reasonable appropriate programmatic goal for a particular learner. I don't know that there are written guidelines in regard to what I'm going to suggest to you next but it's what I have consistently done in my practice and it's what I recommend to students here. I think the younger the learner is for whom a map is being completed, the more blue cells you will have and the fewer black cells you will have. I think we will always want to operate under the assumption that we have high expectations for the learners with deaf-blindness. We really don't know how far they can go when a child is two-years-old, or four-years-old. We really don't want to cap what we believe his or her potential to be and ruling out program goals.\
Now, if a child has no vocal cords even when the child is tow you could rule out speech as an expressive form of communication because the child is not going to use natural speech because it's a physiologic impossibility. If a child absolutely has no vision whatsoever, then you could cross out - in black - written word in the receptive part of the map even if the child is very, very young because that is not going to be a possibility given that child's sensory skills. So again, I'm not saying that you should never, ever use elimination or black X's of cells on the map with young learners. I just believe we need to keep the sky the limit - so to speak - and have more things possible as future goals. As children age up, as they move into secondary schools and they get to be 14-years of age, 16-years of age and older. If the teenager is still functioning in the non-symbolic range of communication, I think the team is going to want and need to make more difficult decisions about which of the augmentative modes of communication the team is going to pursue with that learner and not keep the variety so wide and open because we would be getting to a point you'd have only six or seven years to fully develop that learners communication system. So you need to make the harder decisions the older the learner gets if the skills across this communication map are not being accomplished.\
So now that we've learned the legend, we've learned the layout of the map, let's take a look at how it can be marked.\
SLIDE 4\
On this particular slide, I just tried to give you an example of how you might indicate a learner's current communication skills. In the receptive forms portion of the map, you'll see that this particular learner-- and this is a real little guy that I know, so I'm not making this up. And this little guy does use natural context cues. He responds to his care-giver's facial expressions. He's an oral feeder, so he responds to taste. His team has put into place a system of tactile queues to queue him when he's going to be picked up, when he's going to be put down, when his chair is going to be moved, when he is going to be positioned in alternative equipment. They use object queues to try to support his activities or his movement between activities in an object schedule, and he has a pretty good understanding of those. So those three cells in the receptive forms portion of the map are marked with red diagonal lines. In the middle portion, the communication in tense, you'll see there are two. This little guy does a good job of calling attention to himself and does a great job, as do many, many children of protesting, or refusing, or saying no in some way or another, even if it's not appropriate behavior. Sometimes he just spits, but that is a protest. Or pushing things away or knocking things off his tray onto the floor. But he has mastered attention to self and protester refusal. That's what this particular middle section of the map shows.\
In the third section of the map, the triangle that points to the left, this little fella has mastered vocalization. He's mastered using some movements for communication purposes. He touches people or touches objects when he wants them if they're within his reach, of course. And those three things are fully colored in the red diagonal lines to say, "This little fella has mastered those particular skills." There's a fourth cell in the map, manipulate person or object, that has a few red diagonal lines. And this is a method that you may use on the map if your team decides you want to try it. I think it's just another source of information. It's a way to code that this particular skill is emerging. This little fella has started to hang an object to his communication partner if he needs help with it. If he wants something turned on, he can't turn it on, he started to hand it to another person to say, "Help me. Give me some assistance here." He has started to try to get a hold of an individual and pull them toward himself, not just touching them, but to try to move them or indicate to them in some way something that he wants. But it's not consistent. It's not consistent across settings. It's not consistent across people. So this on is something we're starting to see from him, but we need a whole lot more before we mark that as totally mastered. So that's why part of the cell is marked.\
The fourth section of the map, the second expressive communication forms piece, is the section that deals with sound production for the purposes of expression. And this fella, he coos, he makes kind of calming sounds, or when he's calm, he will make comfort sounds. He laughs. Not necessarily always appropriately, but that isn't a part of this cell. He laughs. As you move on down the line, you'll see that protowords are partially marked. Limited words, 2 words to 25 words, are partially marked. Again, this is where we see him functioning right now. Those things are emerging. Protowords, in essence, are things that this little guy says that are idiosyncratic. They're not clearly articulated words. They may not even be words that other children would use. If he uses something like, "Gib-hah," to mean, "Come here," or Gib-hah is his grandpa, it doesn't sound like anything else, but it has a word-meaning, even if it doesn't sound like a clearly articulated word. So we see that he has three skills from this slide of the communication map alone that look like they would be great candidates for one of your goals. And that's what you see on some of this slide. It may be a little bit confusing. We'll try to talk it through. It's difficult when I can't be drawing this as I'm actually speaking with you, but we're going to give this a shot.\
SLIDE 5\
The green dot, in some cases, if we go back to the top of the receptive communication forms, in some places, simple and complex gesture cues, the green dots appear there independently. And we say, "We think those are reasonable targets for one-year progress for this learner." We also marked object cues. You say, "Well, that was fully mastered." Well, it was fully mastered in that with the object cues we had introduced to him, he had them. He had them down cold. He seemed to understand them. But it was a limited set or a limited number of objects. So we want to continue to work on expanding the breadth, the variety, the number of object cues to which he can respond. So this indication, where the green dots overlay the red lines, says, "Okay. He's got this concept with familiar objects in his schedule, in his task analysis of a particular care activity. He seems to understand.\
But we want to continue to develop his repertoire of object cues and increase the number to which he can respond. So that's why you have the green and red in the same cell. And teams may choose to do that. And the communication intents, we've got two sections. We're going to work on two new functions for this learner's communication to request interaction, more a social kind of thing. We sort of think that might be what he's doing with trying to manipulate people in the expressive section. We're not sure, so we want to try to shape that requesting interaction and along with that, if it makes sense-- it seems to be a natural outgrowth that he might be able to learn to get a greeting. So those are the two intents.\
In the expressive communication forms, again, we have two. One is an overlay with vocalizations. We're going to try to expand the number of vocalizations this learner can use meaningfully and teach him to use a calling switch. The calling switch could set him up for augmentative communication use in the future. He doesn't seem to have the foundation for a sophisticated augmentative communication system to be introduced at this point. We'll talk about that as we proceed here today. But a calling switch certainly could be partnered with the idea of greeting people, greeting family, greeting peers, greeting people in the cafeteria. So we want to introduce a calling switch to this little fellow. And those are the one-year goals.\
We have three under receptive, two under communication intents, and two in the expressive communication form. Makes for an annual projection that we would be, as a team, working on seven communication targets with this youngster. At this point, some of you may say, "Well, Susan, how many communication targets should we have?" I don't know. There isn't a magic number. You know, I think for children, teenagers, young adults, if they do not have an intact, organized communication system, it's my personal and professional belief that needs to be priority number one with a learner. So I think there need to be some communication goals in that learner's IEP. Again, it depends on the child's level of function. My belief is communication is the basis for all other learning. I think there need to be more than one. I also think marking 15 or 20 of these cells on this map as goals for this year's education accomplishment is not realistic. If you're working-- especially this little fellow, this example, this poor little fellow, when we made it, he was about five years old. He wasn't quite five years old. But if this is the level that we choose, function and communicatively, and he's been alive for almost five years, in one years time, we're not going to show gains of 15 new communication skills.\
So what's reasonable? I don't know. I think it is important to select something, that a team selects something from receptive, something from intent, and something from expressive communication. So that would be a minimum of three, and in this instance, you'll see we've used seven.\
SLIDE 6\
The next piece of the communication map is the future projection of goals. With this particular team, they really did not want to project 20, 25 goals. And earlier, I think I suggested to you that when kids are young, and this little guy is five, it cannot hurt to have a much larger number of blue boxes than you see here on this particular slide. Here you see six different future goals. These are goals beyond one-year's time. I think it is a team decision. The younger kids are the more reasonable, I believe it is, to have more blue framed cells in the map. But if a team really wants to make some of those hard decisions now, maybe on the basis of the child's diagnosis, family preference, to make some of those decisions and say, "We are intentionally, purposefully, targeting that this child will use tangible symbols and pictures to receive information, and we are heading for speech as his major form of expressive communication," the map can be used to indicate those priorities. And that's what I've done with this particular example is to show you how a map could be used to indicate top priorities after an educational team has done like a triage, and the numbers of cells that would be marked would be smaller such as this. I think it's easier for you as individuals to envision what a map would look like with lots and lots and lots of blue cells, so you don't need me to illustrate that for you.\
SLIDE 7\
Let's take a look now at the last element of the communication map and this is using the black X's to indicate what really are not expected to be reasonable goals for the learner and we've marked out quite a lot of things in the receptive section. We marked out miniatures because this child is legally blind. We marked out miniature objects. The child is legally blind, has pretty limited visual use really and miniatures should never be used with kids who are blind because the only reason they have meaning to use is they visually match the actual object-- the full-size object. And to kids who can't see what the full-size objects look like, the miniatures don't have meaning. We can accomplish more with kids if we would use textures or tactile clues.\
The team marked out line drawings. They said the kid really needs the support, in their opinion, of pictures. We marked out speech. The child does not have a cochlear implant at this time. Using auditory cues does not seem to be a reasonable goal because-- for receptive. This is receptive. The speech is marked out with a black X because his hearing loss is in the severe to profound range. And so on and so forth so those things have been eliminated. We have not eliminated any of the [inaudible]. We've eliminated miniatures again under expressive forms and we've eliminated manual sign as an expressive form because the child does use a wheelchair, has some pretty significant motor involvement even in his upper extremities-- hands-- so that the formation of manual signs is very difficult and the team doesn't believe that would be the best way to go. The family is not supportive of manual signs for this particular learner.\
So that's what a map can look like. I think you can see how it-- over the years if you would find different colors to mark with if you really want to know what happens year to year. If you really, as a team, are not so focused on what happens year to year but what has happened in regards to a child's language and communication growth and progress you can continue on with the same red lines to overlay the green dots when that's mastered. Green dots laid on top of the blue frames to say, "Okay this has become a current goal," and so on and so forth just so long as you keep a running list of dates and each time the map is updated. I think you need to indicate those dates.\
One other advantage that I think makes more sense now that you've seen what a completed communication map might look like is sometimes it's very difficult I believe-- at least in my experience it's been difficult-- with a learner's team meeting with who said, "I want my child to learn to use a voice output communication aid. An electronic voice output communication aid. Why don't you start that with him right now?" And we can say that's what's called the electronic systems-- the far right-hand box in the expressive communication forms of this map-- and I think using a map-- using a visual-- the teacher and speech and language pathologist on a team can show the parents, "You know, we're not ruling that out. That's a real possibility. But we have so many intermediate skills between where little Johnny is functioning now and where Johnny needs to be to effectively use an electronic system." I think it helps the team to help the parent understand, "We're not ruling that out. We're not saying we're never get there. We're not saying your child will never use an electronic communication system for expression. We're just saying this is where he is and these things have to come first developmentally." If I didn't make a point of saying that clearly before, the map-- in each of the four sections-- does proceed in a developmental fashion from left to right. Okay? From section to section-- receptive, intent and expression-- they don't necessarily line up with each other in terms of developmental ages. I'll show you a slide on that in a few minutes.\
But from left to right, it does represent a general development progression. I don't like to use the word prerequisite to say that each and every one of the skills to the left of another is a prerequisite for that skill. One reason being that kids deaf blindness, their development in any area,-- including communication-- is not smooth. It's not linear. It's not predictable. Each of you knows this. I'm not telling you anything you don't know. But we do have kids that have skills kind of all over the quote map. Well literally they could have skills all over a map here. But generally speaking if we can move from right to left we have a better chance at success of building a firm communication foundation so when we introduce the electronic system to Johnny he will be more apt to one, be successful with it and two, to retain his skills and three, learn to use that independently to initiate communication with it if he has a foundation of communication skills. So I think that's another advantage of using a mapping process.\
SLIDE 8\
And we're going to take a little bit of a different turn for a moment, and I want to talk very, very, very briefly about the key components of symbolic expression simply because I think that this will give you a little bit of a foundation for the last points I want to make about the communication map. I will reference you to the fact there is another webinar available through the Kansas Deaf-Blind Project that more fully develops-- it's a single webinar that is devoted to the development of symbolization ability. So we have maybe three slides here to do what the Kansas Deaf-Blind Project and I have done in an entirely separate webinar. But I think you need this for the last piece of the communication mapping topic.\
There's a book that was written 23 years ago by Werner and Kaplan that was way ahead of its time. In my opinion, these gentlemen were sort of the Steve Jobs of the development of communication abilities and understanding the development of symbolic communication abilities. And they talk about an addressor, addressee, a referent, and representation. Well to use words that I think are more common to us and teachers and families, there's somebody who sends a message. So we'll think of this as the child who has deaf-blindness. He's going to send a message. Then we have somebody who's going to receive the child's message. Because when we're talking about expression, the child will send the message, somebody else will be the message receiver, and we refer to that individual as learner's partner or the learner's communication partner. The referent, that's the content. That's the object, the thing about which the expression will occur. That's the object to be represented. And then finally, we have the actual form of representation itself. For us right now the representation is my spoken words. You are processing my spoken words. It's my PowerPoint slide. You're looking at my slide that says, "One, two, three, four." So we've got a simultaneous two different modes of representation.\
Well, what get's tricky with learners with deaf-blindness, because almost 91% of kids with deaf-blindness have other disabilities in addition to their vision loss and their hearing loss, and many, many, many, many of these children and young adults experience intellectual disability, which is going to delay their communication development.\
SLIDE 9\
When we talk about symbols, they're very, very, very abstract. Symbols are abstract ways to represent objects, things, people. It takes very complex thought to understand those abstractions. It takes complex thought to understand that this one written word or this one spoken word can stand for something else in another place, at another time, and so on and so forth. Symbolic communication involves using these abstract representations or using these symbols to separate us in time and in space, between the thing that we want to communicate about. All right? If I were to ask each of you right now, "Think of your--" Let's say you're not in your homes. "Think of what your kitchen in your home looks like." Well, you can do that. Even though in space, you're separated from your kitchen, you can get a visual image. You can know what I mean when you say, "Kitchen." You can think of what's there, so on and so forth. If I ask each of you to think about what you did on your birthday last year, you could do that even though we're separated in time maybe by one month, maybe by as much eleven months, between now and your birthday. Because you can handle the abstraction - the very complex way to represent things abstractly - you can deal with the separation in space between your kitchen, and in time between your birthday last year, to understand the words I'm speaking, the things that are written in the PowerPoint.\
SLIDE 10\
Kids who don't have that symbolic ability have to rely on much, much more concrete ways, strategies, interactions, in order to communicate with us. So there's a real quick chart that I've created here that shows you there are three stages on the continuum of symbolization development. This is just the way I choose to talk about symbolization development. Some authors use six. Some authors use seven. Some authors use nine. I sort of cut to the chase, and I say, "Well, there's the one on the far right that I've just been talking about, symbolic or abstract symbolic when we communicate with regular words, written words. Traditional orthographies means traditional print type. And we're each responsible for our own expressions and understanding. On the far left is the extreme opposite. Learners who are not symbolic some authors will say, "Oh, this is pre-symbolic or pre-linguistic." It's my preference to say non-symbolic. I think the prefix pre- says the other is necessarily coming. It's just a matter of time. And with many learners with deaf-blindness, some kids never advance beyond the non-symbolic stage. Many, many do, but some do not. And this non-symbolic stage involves using idiosyncratic gestures. Idiosyncratic vocalizations. These are things unique to that particular learner. Banging on top of the TV to say change the channel. That's not conventional. They may demonstrate little overt behavior. There may be real subtle movements, subtle sounds. If a learner is a prone stander and jerks his head when somebody walks past that may be what you're going to capitalize on. With learners who are not symbolic the parents responsible for communicative interaction.\
Then, we have the middle column. And this is just my way of saying you don't jump from not being able to use symbols to fully being able to use symbols. There's an intermediate stage that is in a very sophisticated fashion called transitional. How about that? I'm sure you'd like that. But it's a matter of concrete symbolic behavior where learners will start to use vocalizations. A to say hello or hi or hey. Wa Wa for water or drink. Those are pretty conventional vocalizations. Conventional gestures like extending their hand with palm up to say give me that. I want to see that. Give it to me. Waving goodbye. Those conventional kinds of things serve as a bridge. So you might say, "Oh, well, then are those conventional gestures, conventional vocalizations a good place at which to begin to try and teach?" Yes, they are. Three-dimensional objects are used in this intermediate stage to bridge to symbolization. And the partner share's responsibility for the communicative interactions but can't release it totally to the learner. There's still interpretation. There's still reading into the learner's behavior that has to occur. So the reason we took this little detour through a very quick course in non-symbolic through symbolic communication development is I thought it might be important, useful, helpful, to you for me to try and indicate on the map where I think the different stages fall in.\
SLIDE 11\
So if we wanted to overlay non-symbolic, transitional, and symbolic communication on the map, I would divide them where I've drawn these orange vertical lines. Now with this slide in front of you I think you can see what I tried to say earlier that the developmental progression from left to right, it doesn't line up. In the receptive triangle, the intents triangle, and the expressions triangle you can see those orange lines aren't all right on top of one another. So the first three cells are non-symbolic and receptive. The first four cells, approximately, are non-symbolic and intent, and several cells are non-symbolic in terms of expression which, again, just reiterates, reinforces the point for learners to have a sufficiently developed communication foundation for learning augmentative communication. There's lots of things that need to be in place.\
SLIDE 12\
So let's look at the next slide, which drops in approximately where the transitional stage would fall. I've used a darker blue squiggly line. It's really not super clear. It doesn't fall 100% on the dividing lines between these different cells. It's clearer in the expressive section than the other two, but hopefully, that will give you an idea of where I think these skill-sets on the communication map fall in reference to the major stages of communication development.\
SLIDE 13\
And then, finally, on this particular slide, you see that I have labeled, again in blue - I guess I was running out of colors. I thought it was purple, but it sure doesn't look purple on here - is the symbolic stage, and that's everything to the far right of the squiggly line. And from there, again, I'll reiterate, if you're interested in seeing the second communication map, it overlaps a little bit with the transitional stage and moves onto more fully developed symbolic communication. The second communication map is great if you need some kind of a developmental guide to help your learner develop understanding of adjectives, adverbs, conjunctions, verb forms, verb tenses, construction of grammatically or syntactically appropriate sentences, and those types of things. It really is more a course in basic English 101 than in early communication development. But that is available through the Kansas Deaf-Blind Project if you're interested in that resource.\
SLIDE 14\
So winding this one up, as I've said, if you're interested in learning more and much more detail about the development of symbolization ability, there is a separate webinar recording that's simply called the symbolization continuum. Some of which you saw in the three slides we reviewed today will be repeated in that webinar discussion, but there's much, much more background, a much more complete explanation of partners' roles, intention roles, how you move from phase to phase, how this develops, and I encourage you to look at that symbolization continuum recording if you're working with learners who don't have well-developed communication skills.\
SLIDE 15\
And finally, if you want to pursue symbolization on your own in other forms the National Deaf-Blind Project has a really great little, short article called the Path to Symbolism. If you go to the website listed on your screen right now, choose Selected Topics, choose Communication, and then under that choose the Path to Symbolism. I think you'll that article to be an easy read. It's short. Very practical. And you have the full site for the Werner and Kaplan book about the amazing work they did 23 years ago about projecting how human beings develop symbolization ability. I think we've finished. I do appreciate your attention, your time. The final thing I will mention through the Kansas Deaf-Blind Project, there is a handout available to you that gives definitions of each of the cells in the Communication Map. So if you're uncertain - you as a team, you as a family member - of what some of those cells really mean, you may certainly request that handout and maybe that would be like a cheat sheet for your educational team as you're completing the map. Otherwise, I think that's it for this session. I hope you find the map helpful. And thank you for your attention.\
}