9. Development of Communicative Intentionality

SUSAN BASHINSKI:

Slide 1
Thanks for joining us today for this session on communicative intentionality. My name is Susan Bashinski. I've been asked to talk to you about this topic by the staff of the Kansas State Deaf-Blind Project.

Slide 2
So as we begin our discussion of communicative intentionality, I think it's important for us to briefly define, certainly at least to name, the three primary stages into which we'll categorize the development of this very important skill. The first stage, we'll simply call non-intentional. The middle or second stage, very sophisticated name here, we'll call it transitional stage [laughter]. And the third stage is the full intentional or fully intentional stage. Very briefly, in stage number one, non-intentional, the simplest way to describe how interactions happen for a learner at this stage is to say the learner's communication partner is totally, 100% responsible for interpreting the intentionality that might possibly be associated with the learner's overt behavior. So the partner sees what the learner does, hears the sounds the learner makes, watches the movements a learner makes, and assigns some potential, possible, hopefully probable meaning to that behavior, thus assigning some intention to the behavior. But the learner herself is non-intentional.
In the second stage that we've labeled here, transitional, the learner's behavior itself is intentional. If you read in the literature, some writers will say the learner is intentional at this point in time. And that is not inaccurate, that is true. But even though the learner is demonstrating intentional behavior at this transitional stage, that learner is still pre-linguistic. What that means is, at this transitional stage in the development of intentionality, the learner is not demonstrating behavior that is purposefully communicative. And in the final stage, intentional, or fully intentional, the learner's behavior is intentional, and we've achieved that higher level of standard, that the learner's behavior is also intentionally communicative. So when a learner's development of communication skill reaches this third level, to be fully intentional, that learner's behavior is no longer pre-linguistic, but becomes linguistic. We will more thoroughly investigate each of these stages in subsequent slides, and there is a chart in which I've summarized these different elements, the aspects that differentiate one stage from another, and hopefully you will find that helpful.
Slide 3
On this next slide, you see two terms, pre-intentional and non-intentional. Many people would say that these two terms are interchangeable. I do believe that, for our purposes, it's fair enough to say that the terms pre-intentional and non-intentional may be used synonymously or interchangeably in a lot of respects. The reason I have bolded the term non-intentional is because, of the two, that is certainly my preference. And very quickly, I would like to explain why it's my preference. I think it is more accurate to describe a learner's communication development in saying that right here, right now, as she is currently demonstrating skills, this learner is not intentional. Period. Maybe she will learn skills to become transitionally intentional or fully intentional. Certainly that's the hope of the learner's family, of the learner's educational team. A team will strive to move that learner's development along the continuum of intentionality development.
With that said, there's no guarantee. Some learners, regardless of their chronological age, will remain in a stage of non-intentional communicational development. And that's okay, too. That is my choice for the term non-intentional. It legitimizes, in my opinion, this stage of communication development. It makes it okay for a learner to be functioning in a non-intentional stage, as long as her partners, her communication partners, are educated in terms of how best to interact with her. It's my opinion that if we choose to use the word pre-intentional, there's some kind of subtle innuendo that that's not quite good enough, or that's not legitimate enough in and of itself, because it's just pre. It's just leading up to something more, leading up to something better, leading up to something more sophisticated. Like we've got our eye on the prize of the next stage without giving enough respect to the current stage in which the learner is functioning.
So if you are more comfortable with pre-intentional, I don't think that's wrong. As I say, the two can by synonymous. But I've offered for your consideration my rationale as to why non-intentional is a more appropriate choice of terminology.

Slide 4
Now that we've completed our very brief discussion of these two terms that are sometimes used interchangeably to talk about the first stage of communicative intentionality, let's move on to actually define what we mean by that term. A definition of communicative intentionality includes two parts. This one is a lot more complicated than the definition of symbolization. In this series, there is a companion webinar about symbolization. Perhaps you've listened to that one. If you have, you found, I hope, that the definition of symbolization is pretty straightforward. One element. Not too many conditions. Either symbolic or it's not. And it's moving on its way to being symbolic, but there aren't multiple moving parts to consider. That's not the case with communicative intentionality. This definition involves two related, but very discrete elements. The first one is the deliberate pursuit of a goal. The second element of the definition is awareness of a means for obtaining the goal. So in order to be fully, intentionally communicative, a learner's behavior needs to involve the deliberate pursuit of a goal and the means for obtaining the goal. This translates into two different ways to look at the behaviors that a child or young adult will demonstrate. We can describe a learner's behavior as being intentional, just intentional behavior. Or we can talk about the learner's behavior as being intentionally communicative. If behavior is intentionally communicative, that learner is doing something to have impact on another person, not just interacting with objects or acting on objects.
Intentional communication might involve the use of objects. Sure, that's not a problem. But the key element of this component is that to be intentionally communicative, the learner is intending to have impact on another person. Let's talk about an example. Perhaps a learner will sit down on the floor and bang her head on the wall. And she repeatedly engages in this behavior, banging her head on the wall. If she's doing it just because it feels good, it calms her in some way-- I know that's hard for us to imagine. But if kids aren't banging their heads really hard, it might calm them in some way. It might stimulate her in some way. Perhaps, if she's totally blind, she gets some sort of internal light show or flashing lights or some kind of sensation that feels good. So she will repeatedly return to this behavior, doing it intentionally. Period. If she just does it because it feels good, feels right, she likes something about it, that behavior is described as intentional behavior. But it does not take the jump to meet the second part of the criterion on the screen because she's not doing it for the purpose of impacting another person. Now, let's change the scenario up a little bit. If the learner has figured out through experience with this head-banging behavior that, "Hey, if, when my mom or my dad walks into the room, and I hear their footsteps or I feel their feet as they stomp on the floor vibrating the floor, or they talk to me and I hear them-- If I know then that I'm going to go over to my favorite spot and start banging my head, mom will pick me up."
So if the learner goes over to the spot, and glancing in mom's direction or kind of stopping and starting to see if mom or dad are going to do something, she's banging her head for the purpose of trying to get mom to pick her up. Or trying to get dad to give her some response like, "Oh, Susie, don't bang your head. Stop." In other words, if the learner goes, sits, bangs head for the purpose of getting positive attention, then that behavior is described as intentional.

Slide 5
Let's begin a more thorough examination of the three levels through which communication intentionality emerges. First of these stages is nonintentional. At this stage, a learner is neither deliberately pursuing a goal nor aware of the means for obtaining the goal. Another way to say this is that at the nonintentional stage, a learner does not demonstrate either of the two components of the definition of communicative intentionality. At this stage, the responsibility to have a successful communication interaction totally rest with the partner. As the learner might be observed to be throwing objects off a table, the communication partner has to try to watch the learner's behavior, and say, "I wonder what that might mean. I wonder if that might mean she doesn't like the way those feel. They're slimy, gooey, and she doesn't like slimy, gooey textures. Okay. I'm going to treat it that she doesn't slimy things, so I'll give her a different set of objects." You might say, "Well, how does the partner know that that's right?" In response, I would say to you, "The partner doesn't know. The partner's going to be making educated guesses as he or she watches the learner to try to interpret what the learner's behaviors might mean." And as the partner watches the learner over time, as mom or dad watches their child over time, you're going to be making notes and try to figure out if there might be patterns in certain behaviors in which the learner engages to try to see if they will give the partners clues about what the purpose of the behaviors might be. It's a guess and eliminate, take data, guess again, and try to discern what a learner might potentially be trying to communicate.

Slide 6
In the middle stage, the transitional stage of the emergence of communicative intentionality, we see the learner demonstrating the first but not the second element of the definition of communication intentionality. In this stage, the learner is deliberately engaging in behavior, but not with a mental plan for obtaining the desired goal. In other words, the learner does part one. "I'm doing this behavior on purpose," like the example I gave you about banging head because it feels good, but not with a mental plan for obtaining a desired goal. The communication partner may use the context to derive meaning of the learner's behavior. In other words, the communication partner might still have to do some guessing and some interpretation, but there might be a little obvious connection to what the partner sees in the learner's behavior.
For example, maybe you notice a child in your classroom, a young adult in your classroom, who will get up and pace in the classroom, walk around the classroom. And perhaps as he or she paces, sometimes the behavior seems to be more agitated than other times. But as you, as a communication partner, observe this behavior, it seems to change. It doesn't always seem to be consistent. So you watch what the learner does, and you tend to notice that the walking seems to increase as the time of the day passes. If it's happening in the morning, as the morning gets later and later and closer to lunchtime, you as the teacher might notice the pacing and the agitation increases. So you as the partner would use that context, "Oh, we're now 25 minutes from lunchtime, I seem to notice that Jennifer walks around a whole lot more when she's hungry. Or I think she walks around and tends to get more agitated when she's hungry." So I'm going to use the time of the day to say, "I'm going to interpret it this way. I'm going to interpret Jennifer's walking and agitated behavior to mean, 'I'm hungry. Will you please give me something to eat?'" We can also guess. We can only interpret how this behavior might be deliberate on the learner's part.
The way that I can best explain this to you is to offer a couple hypothesis because, to tell you the truth, we'll never know until the learner develops a more conventional way to tell us what she means. But we do know that walking around the room is a volitional behavior. It's something that Jennifer chooses to do. It's not an automatic thing that just happens. Her automatic behavior is she sits on the floor or she sits in a beanbag or she sits in a chair. It takes some deliberate effort. It takes something deliberate on the learner's part to get up out of whatever it is in which she's seated and start moving around the room. So that behavior is deliberate. Perhaps it helps calm her, her hunger pains, a little bit, if she's moving around. Or it distracts from them as she walks around and feels the textures on the walls. Or it somehow or some way makes her feel better, that when she's walking around, the hunger isn't so all-consuming to her. Again, we can't be sure of that. It's a matter of interpretation and trying to figure it out. And that's how context can help a partner figure it out. The walking behavior's deliberate, but Jennifer is not walking around on purpose to say, "Hey, teacher, hey, Dad, come on, I'm hungry here. Give me something to eat." It's not like she's walking to the kitchen, walking to the fridge, or something like that. She's just walking, and the partner has to interpret it.

Slide 7
The final stage, the stage of fully intentional communicative behavior. In this stage, the learner is deliberately pursuing a goal and has a mental plan for obtaining the desired goal. To say this another way, in the stage of intentionality, the learner does demonstrate both component elements of the definition that we looked at several slides ago. In the stage of communicative intentionality, a learner does use his behavior for the purpose of affecting another person. The little one that sat on the floor when she felt dad's steps walk into the room and bangs her head with the hope of daddy picking her up and giving her some attention. That is an example of communicative intentional behavior. She's banging her head for the purpose of getting daddy to give her attention for the purpose of getting daddy to pick her up.

Slide 8
On this chart there is a ton of information. Some of it we've already discussed. I thought it might be useful to you to have it all in one place to look at all at the same time. What I would like to direct your attention to, first of all, would be the fourth and fifth lines in the chart. On these two lines, it shows you from left to right how the two component elements of communicative intentionality emerge. In line four, behavior is not intentional in the non-intentional stage. It becomes intentional in the transitional stage and remains intentional throughout the remainder of that learner's development. It goes from not intentional to intentional in the middle stage. In the line immediately below, the behavior is not intentionally communicative at either of the first two stages of development. But behavior does become intentionally communicative when the child, the young adult, reaches stage three. That is the order in which those two component parts do emerge.
If we jump up to the second line in the chart, I have provided for you some rough estimates of ages from typical development in which intentionality tends to emerge. These are not absolute. These are not demonstrated in the unanimous body of communication research. Some people do like to have ages from typical development as a guideline. I was a little hesitant to include these, to tell you the truth, but I think it does give us a guidepost. A reference. Please don't get hung up on these numbers. What I think it's important to say, to show you, is that typically developing infants move out of the stage of non-intentional behavior by an average of eight or nine months of age. Some kids will do it sooner than that. As with all developmental milestones, there is not one absolute age at which some behavior-- motor, cognitive, sensory, anything else-- there is not one age by which all kids demonstrate that skill. What I think is interesting is that the transitional stage, the middle stage in the emergence of communicative intentionality, is really, really short. It tends to be estimated to run from about three to six months, and that is it. It' a very short transitional period of time. Typically developing children will reach the intentional stage of communication by an average that is reported to be somewhere between 12 and 15 months of age. But again, that's like any other developmental milestone. It's a range. 12 to 15 months of age.
The next line in the chart, it just tries to give you a few examples of what the learner's behaviors might actually look like. In the non-intentional stage, behavior is reflexive, random. It involves the learner's body being controlled, if you will, by her neurological system. What is manifest, is behavior state that is the neurological system of the child says, "You're sleepy now. You're awake now. You're alert now. You're very dizzy." It's very hard. If a baby-- even a typically developing baby-- gets his or her days and nights mixed up, and moms and dads say, "Oh, we've got to change this behavior," and maybe over the course of six weeks, eight weeks or so as they try to keep the baby up later at night, finally go to sleep and try to change the cycle around and they say, "We did it. We got it changed." When really, probably what happened is the child's neurologic system became better integrated, and behavior state no longer dictated the child's level of alertness.
The second last line from the bottom of this chart does outline in a hierarchical form, the involvement or the responsibility that lies on the partner in a communicative interaction. It begins at the non-intentional stage that the partner must interpret the learner's behavior, through the partner being required to do some degree of interpretation, to the point at which the learner becomes fully intentional, and no partner interpretation is required. The very bottom of this chart, again you'll see three words, in my opinion, are probably foreign to most families and most special ed teachers, for that matter. Perlocutionary, illocutionary, and locutionary. I don't think these are words that we necessarily need to strive to make part of our conversational vocabulary. I have put them on the chart. In just a few minutes, we will examine each of these in a little more detail. But I've put them on the chart because these are words that a speech and language pathologist will very frequently use to describe the level of a child or young adult's communication development. You'll read in reports, "Oh, the learner's communication is perlocutionary. The learner's communication is illocutionary." Because those aren't terms commonly used in the field of special education, I thought it was important to include those with a bit of explanation, so if you encounter that in a report, typically from a speech and language therapist, you might have a little bit of a heads up on what that person might mean.

Slide 9
Before we go to actually examine those terms I would like to make a couple of general comments about how communicative intentionality emerges. We've talked about each of the stages. We've talked about the component parts of the definition. We've looked at the chart that shows the progression on how these skills morph and change as a learner’s communication becomes more intentional. But it is really important to also say that a child's development of intentionality doesn't precede in a really simple, one direction kind of fashion, left to right on the chart. Nope. It doesn't work that way. It would be so beautiful if it did. But a learner’s development of communicative intentionality it will go from left to right across the chart in one setting, and maybe in another setting it'll backslide. And then it'll start to move, and behaviors look more intentional. Or more intentionally communicative, maybe with a particular partner, or with a particular set of materials. But then if that teachers absent, or the speech language pathologist is absent and there's a substitute, the communication skills will backslide to the left.
And it goes back and forth and back and forth varying by time of day, temperature, communication partner, setting, location, materials, the level of the child's health. How robust, how healthy is she on any given day? How does she feel? I think just trying to project to yourself on day's you don't feel very well, you've got a bad cold or you haven't had enough sleep, you're not performing at your optimal level either. So kids use of behaviors as either intentional behavior or is intentionally communicative behavior, it moves. It goes up. It slides back. It goes up. It slides back. It moves up and move in general from the chart on the left to the right, but it's not a simple, smooth flow in one direction.
Learners do demonstrate skills at multiple points along that continuum that we've examined. And the way we will describe the learner’s behavior at any given point in time is by saying, by using the label of the stage at which the kid seems to be showing the largest number of skills. It will be a few and non-intentional. Lots and lots and transitional and maybe one, or two, even all the way up under communicative intentionality. But we would describe that learner’s behaviors communication behaviors overall as being in a state of transitional development.

Slide 10
The levels of intentionality are not differentiated by distinct boundaries. Wouldn't it be great if on a Sunday night, a child went to bed nonintentional and woke up on Monday morning, "Bang," transitional and communicative develop? Doesn't work like that. As we've said, it moves up. It slides back. It moves up. It moves back. And the learner's communication level is generally labeled by the descriptor that corresponds with the majority of his skills related to intentionality.

Slide 11
So let's move on to an examination of these three really strange, funny kinds of words. Perlocutionary, illocutionary, and locutionary, again, matching up perlocutionary with non-intentional, illocutionary with transitional, locutionary with intentional. As we examine each of these three stages, I'm going to talk with you for a few minutes about both expressive and receptive communication skills. Because, as you know, or as you might have learned in another webinar in the Kansas State Deafblind Project series, communication is a loop. A learner, a child, a young adult, has to be able to send messages to other people, or does send messages to other people, by his behavior. That is referred to as expressive communication. But to have an interaction with someone, that young adult, that child, that learner, also has to be able to understand, or receive, information, messages, from a communication partner. And that reception is called receptive communication. That comprehension is called receptive communication. And it is definitely important as we examine how communicative intentionality develops, that we be aware of both the expressive and receptive sides of the communication loop.

Slide 12
In this first stage of development per locutionary, again, non-intentional, a learner’s behaviors are very idiosyncratic. They're unique to him. He may use behaviors to do things entirely opposite of what other people do. He maybe chooses behaviors that nobody else in your particular family uses for the purposes of communication. That learner's behaviors are very context driven. The example that we talked about, the learner's starting to pace and get agitated when he's hungry. It's because of time of day, because of lack of food in his stomach. He's hungry. The context influences his behavior. At this stage the child does begin to learn the power of communication because as the screen shows, as the partner is interpreting behaviors every once in a while, and we hope with increasing frequency, the partner is going to guess correctly what the learner is all about. What the learner might want. What the learner might need. And as the partners guess correctly or as the partners interpret the learner’s behaviors correctly the message is sent, "Wow. If I do something, my mom's going to get me something I like." Or, "Wow. If I walk around like this, mom's going to get me some food. Wow. If I bang my head on the wall like this, my dad's going to pick me up and hold me in his lap. Wow. if I walk around like this, my teacher assistant is going to take me down to the cafeteria and let me start and get my lunch tray." The kid learns the power communication.
It's also important that we realize on the receptive side of things, at this level of development of communication intentionality, the learner only comprehends the speaker's tone of voice. And whether or not an interaction partner is making physical contact or touching the learner. What this means is if you are feeding your young child and you say, "Come on honey, open your mouth. Yeah there you go," the words don't necessarily mean anything to that child but if you are looking at the child, if the child can see your face at all, your facial expression is positive. You're smiling when you say something in that way. Your eyebrows go up. Your tone is inviting. It's not a typical talk like this, "What's going on?" It's like, "Yeah!" It's encouraging. Come on. And it gets the child-- it leads the child to the behavior that you want. In all honesty if you were to use that same facial expression and that same rhythmic, raised pattern of inflection in your tone, and say something like, "Oh my goodness. I hate this food. You don't want it." You would likely get the same response because the words don't carry the meaning. Your facial expression, if you reach out and touch the child's cheek. You reach out and touch the child's bottom lip or touch the child's chin while you're looking positively, you're smiling, your eyebrows go up, you're using this encouraging tone. It's those elements to which the learner is going to respond, not the words you choose.

Slide 13
At the middle stage of development, elocutionary. Again, we'll examine the expressive and the receptive skills associated with this level of development. Expressively. This is when intentionality begins to dawn. We begin, begin, begin to see purposeful communication emerge. The behaviors become intentional at this middle stage. Context might still contribute, but to a more minor degree than in the previous stage. So the kid, the young adult, begins to do things on purpose, because he is beginning to sort of associate, hey, when I did this before something neat happened to me. I'm going to try it again to see what happens. Now, the learner doesn't have the inner language to actually verbalize that to herself, but it's the process that we interpret is happening. It's like a series of experimentation. This has worked before. I wonder if I do it now, what will happen? So we begin to see an emergence of purposeful communicative behavior.
In terms of receptive skills, there is some comprehension. A learner will comprehend some words and some simple directives in context. I have to laugh about this, because I was working in a classroom with a teacher this year when I was talking with her about the young lady, a secondary school student, we were trying to get a handle on where she was in terms of communication development. And the teacher said, oh, she understands a lot of things that I say. Really? Okay. Can you give me an example? And the teacher's giving me examples of lots of simple requests or one-step directions the learner follows. So as I'm working with the learner through the course of the day, I just didn't see it. So at the end of the day, when the kids in the class were going to be dismissed in just a few minutes, I asked the teacher if she would please show me an example of how she would get this young woman to follow directions at the end of the school day, and she said, sure. And when the bell rang, all the other kids in the class started packing up their stuff and shoving it in their bookbags. She called the child by name, and we'll call her Sally, and said, Sally, stand up. Go get your backpack and line up. Well, Sally did just that. She got up, she walked over to her backpack, got it, and went and got in line.
So the next day I returned to the classroom and I asked the teacher, when it came time for dismissal, if I could try something, because I still just didn't see the learner as hooking up that much of understanding, of comprehending words out of context. And so when the bell rang, I tried to use the same tone of voice that the teacher had used, but I said something like, Sally, roll over. Go get the trash can. Go over there. Sally stood up, went and got her backpack, and went and got in line. So the words themselves didn't have meaning outside of that context. The way they were phrased, the time of day at which they were phrased, when Sally could see and hear what her classmates were doing, it gave her other clues. It gave her other hints about what her behavior was supposed to be. This can be a real hang-up. We can often, as parents and teachers, misinterpret what kids do, and we really have to be careful to watch, and do experiments with different words in certain context, or to try to teach very specific phrases in meaningful context to try to move the child's development along and not get tricked by this.

Slide 14
Final stage in the emergence of communicative intentionality is called the locutionary stage or the fully intentional stage. This is the beginning of true symbolic expression. I'm talking about the expressive component right now. I should have said that. Under expressive, it's the beginning of true symbolic expression on the part of the learner. The young adult, the child will begin to use his or her first true words. These might be true words in spoken language. These might be true words in manual sign language. The mode or the form in which they're expressed doesn't really matter. But the child, the young adult, is initiating a real, genuine communication expression that is meaningful, and the communication becomes independent of context. I can talk about getting a backpack at any time of the day in a classroom. You can talk about going into the kitchen at any time of the day in your home, not just when it's mealtime. If you need your child to go into the kitchen to get her shoes that were left by the door or to get your purse that you left on the cabinet, you can go to the kitchen independently of, "Oh, I'm hungry now. It's time to eat," or, "Oh, everybody else in the family is going in the kitchen. Communication becomes independent of context at the locutionary stage. In terms of receptive communication, as is true with each of us, learners will begin to understand or to comprehend many more words than they actually use for communication expression. The way we say that in literature is we say, "The comprehension of language exceeds the production of language. Comprehension of language exceeds the expression of language. So kids will both use words symbolically and meaningfully, and they will understand words symbolically and meaningfully, independent of context. And it's important to remember, when we say words, the words could be in sign; the words could be in speech; the words could be through symbols, textural symbols, pictural symbols if your child has vision.

Slide 15
Now that we have concluded our examination of the stages through which communication intentionality emerges, both in terms of non-intentional, transitional, and intentional stages, for the new words we've just learned: perlocutionary, illocutionary, and locutionary, let's see if we can wrap this up and give you a few clues of behaviors for which you might watch to try and see where your child, where a learner in your class might be along this continuum of development.
Absolutely all learners do communicate. Even the adolescent who is demonstrating non-intentional behavior, does communicate. He does things all the time. It may be certain movements he does and certain movements in which he engages. It may be a total calming of his body. Maybe when he feels something brand new with his hands, he quiets his entire body. Maybe it's a matter of respiration rate changing. Maybe it's a matter of muscle tone becoming much more rigid. Every single learner communicates with us somehow. And at the non-intentional stage, where learners demonstrate the kinds of behaviors I've just described, partners really have a huge responsibility to try to sort that all out, figure out the patterns of what the learner might be intending to say.
Absolutely all learners' communication can be improved. The reason I say, or altered, it's a sad reality that some conditions that result in deaf-blindness are progressive conditions in which, over time, learners will lose skills as the disease progresses. In these instances, educational teams and families need to provide alternative ways for that learner to communicate and to both expressively communicate and to receptively understand communication. In these instances we would be moving from right to left along the continuum of development as we try to provide more appropriate means geared to a learners' current level of communication expression.

Slide 16
There are some cues to intentional communication. These are four that I think really speak to us as communication partners, or should really speak to us as communication partners, of learners who are non-intentional, or who are primarily transitionally intentional. We need to watch for attention shift. If a child shift's attention back and forth, if the child can see and looks from mom to the door, from mom to the door, from mom to the door, that's an alternating attention thing. The child may be saying, "Hey mom, take me out that door. Hey mom, take me outside. Hey mom, is dad going to come through the door? Hey mom, is the dog going to come through the door?" But it's like that shift from mom to door, mom to door, mom to door. Or, from paraprofessional to the sippy cup, paraprofessional to the sippy cup. That should be a clue to us. Attention shifting is a real cue that a learner might be engaging in intentional behavior. In the professional literature, you will see this written as gaze shift.
When we talk about learners with deaf-blindness, however, I prefer to talk about attention shift because many of our kids don't have sufficient visual skills to use a shift of eye gaze as a clue. Now, granted, the two examples I gave you did involve eye gaze. It well might. But we could also see a shift in tactile attention. Reaching out and touching something in the front of her, then reaching to try to find and touch something on the right of her, and go back to the front, and go back to the right. Maybe the dog's collar is in front of the child because you've thrown it on the floor getting ready to take the dog for a walk and the dogs lying to the child's right, maybe she'll touch the collar and touch the dog, and touch the collar and touch the dog. That would be a tactile shift of attention. If you notice your child orienting his body differently as there is a ringing telephone in one room and people talking in another room, the child might lean in the direction of the phone ringing, or lean in the direction of people talking. That's a shift of auditory attention. Any way, if there's a repeated shifting more than even two or three times, that should be a signal to us as communication partners that the learner's behavior might be intentional.
The second one is persistence. If a learner persists in a signal, keeps doing something, and keeps doing something, it should be a cue to us, "Maybe she's doing it on purpose and trying to tell me something." The headbanging behavior. Perhaps that was on purpose to try to get you to come over there, perhaps not. We're going to guess wrong sometimes. We're going to guess wrong lots of times to tell you the truth. But if scratching her leg, scratching her leg, scratching her leg, it might really mean, "I've got a mosquito bite here and I need you to pay attention to it." It might be stereotypy. If it's just self-stimulation, then it should not be viewed as a communication signal, but we have to check it out. Maybe if a kid will keep tapping on the tray of her wheelchair and tapping, and tapping, and tapping, maybe it means I'm looking for something that fell off this tray. I need you to help me. I'm trying to find it. I need you to help me. Tap, tap, tap. Tap, tap, tap. We have to pay attention to those persistent signals.
The third one in the list is changing of a behavior. In the speech and language pathology literature, this is called recasting. It simply means if a learner might be tapping on the wheelchair tray, tapping on the wheelchair tray, tapping on the wheelchair tray, because something that with which he was playing has fallen off, then if you as a teacher, as a parent, haven't noticed that, haven't had time to notice that, have been too busy with other kids, even if you've noticed, you've been too busy to get over there and do something, maybe after so long we interpret it that the child might be getting frustrated. So she starts rocking, rocking, rocking really hard, and rocking the front wheels of the chair off the floor because the signal, which was tapping on the wheelchair tray, is now being recast, and I'm going to throw my body back in this chair. I'm going to throw my body back, and throw my body back. I need somebody to do something for me.
Termination of a behavior once a change is made, i.e. the goal is achieved. If, as you try to provide something to the child, or you take away something you think the learner no longer wants, you've made a guess, if the learner stops the behavior, that should be an affirmation to you that, "Ah-ha. I guessed right." When he's rocking back really hard in his wheelchair it means something's fallen off his tray. So when I pick the thing up, put it back on his tray, and help through hand-under-hand to put his hand on the object the thrusting back in the chair stops, you go, "Ah-ha. That's what he wanted. He starts thrusting back in the chair when something falls off his tray." So you make a note of that pattern. If when you pick the object up, put his hand on it, the thrusting back in the chair continues, you go, "Okay. Make a note. That wasn't it. I guessed wrong." And go on to theory number two, a plan B, to try to figure it out. Regardless, these four behaviors on the part of a learner - attention shift, persistence, changing of a behavior, or recasting it, or terminating a behavior once a goal is achieved - are very powerful signals in helping partners know how to facilitate the development of communicative intentionality.

Slide 17
And if over time, partners repeatedly interpret learners' behaviors correctly, it will, indeed, shape intentionality. It will shape that learner's doing and behavior on purpose, shape the intentional behavior, and if you continue to interpret consistently over time, it will also serve to shape communicative intentionality or the learner's use of the behavior to achieve a particular goal. It just takes time and consistency on partner's behalf.

Slide 18
So, in terms of communicative interaction, communicative intervention, you're going to listen with your eyes. Watch the child's behavior. Listen with your hands. Feel changes in muscle tone, feel changes in respiration rate. Listen with your heart. Sometimes go with your gut. Moms and dads, teachers, sometimes you go with your gut, and you just have a "feeling" about what a learner's behaviors might mean. You have a feeling about what the intention of a learner's behaviors might be. Go with that. Now, going with it isn't sufficient. You go with it, and watch what happens. You go with it, and take data about what happens. You go with it and you make notes. "After I did 'X' my child did 'Y'." Keep those notes over time. That's how you're going to help develop the learner's expressive skills. And then talk with more than your mouth. Talk with your hands. Talk with your touch. Talk with objects. In other words, provide information to learners in multiple different forms to help develop the learner's receptive skills.

Slide 19
I have provided on this final slide one reference. The only reason I've provided this is not because it's something I wrote several years ago. I provide it simply because this is a part of project materials that are available to you free of charge through the Kansas Deaf-Blind Project. All you need to do is contact one of the members of that staff. In this particular work, I've written a lot more about how communicative intentionality emerges, and I invite you to contact the project staff to request a copy of this resource. I also encourage you to contact them if you have questions about what we've talked about today.
With that, I thank you for your time. I appreciate you joining us for this session.