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Keenie Designs

ASL Based Communication Placemat; featuring real pictures - DIGITAL DOWNLOAD PDF

ASL Based Communication Placemat; featuring real pictures - DIGITAL DOWNLOAD PDF

$9.99 USD
$14.99 USD $9.99 USD
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This Placemat is created from our Communication Board based on American Sign Language featuring real photographs of each sign.  This is a simple board developed for Early Childhood Learners, can be used during meal time focusing on Key Words to assist with the development of communication skills through the use of real pictures.  This is for a digital download (PDF) only.

 There are ten included pages (8.5 x 14), each featuring a place for dishes AND blank:

  • Pictures with no text labels
  • Text labels in black and white
  • High Contrast with with black (for very beginning development)
  • High Contrast (red and yellow) for Visually Impaired learners
  • Low stimulation Green w/Brown, for ASD learners **

In nine years of working in Special Education I have experienced, specifically with Early Childhood students, the importance of having a variety of tools to encourage communication. Many early childhood students have developmental delays and some students may be more on the level of 12-18 months. There is not a vast amount of materials designed with regard to encouraging communication when line drawings are too advanced developmentally.

I created this communication tool using actual photographs of the signs we begin using from day one in the classroom setting.  These can function in combination with other communication tools, but I have found that children are more interested in engaging with real photographs over line drawings.  This tool is limited to the most basic key words we frequently use in the classroom setting.

**There have been studies which indicate certain colors may be more suitable and preferred by those on the Autism Spectrum.  You can read more HERE.

Pictures are referential in that they can represent objects.  This board aims to assist early learners with abstract and non concrete words which are key to communicating wants and needs.

Much has been researched in more recent times on the use of real photographs as opposed to line drawings to assist with early childhood learners:

Research has actually demonstrated that many children with autism respond better to real pictures than to line drawings.  Pictures are among the most common symbols infants and young children are exposed to early in life.  By 30 months of age, children are able to use pictures referentially as symbols for and sources of information about the world. (DeLoache & Burns, 1994).

Infants as young as three months old can recognize their mother’s face in color photographs (Barrera & Maurer, 1981; deSchonen & Mathviet, 1990).

Perner (1991) reported his 16-month-old attempted to step into a picture of a shoe.  This kind of behavior towards pictures suggests that at this age, young children treat pictures as “things of action” rather than “objects of contemplation.) (Wener & Kaplan, 1964)

Preissler & Corey, 2004; Provided a test of whether toddlers taught a new word in relation to a picture, would take that word and apply it to the picture’s real world referant.  Children 18-24 months of age were taught an unfamiliar label (“whisk”) for small line drawing of an unfamiliar object (a whisk).  Subsequently, they were presented with a pair of stimuli–real whisk and the same simple drawing for which they had learned the label–and asked to indicate a whisk. (ie “Can you show me a whisk?”)

The results of 50 children between 18 and 24 months tested…all of them chose the real whisk, with half selecting the whisk alone and half the real whisk and its picture.
Preissler (2008) found children with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) were making associative mappings between words and pictures…on the same task, the children with ASD rarely picked the real object alone and over half the time picked the line drawing alone. [emphasis mine]

Perner, J. Understanding the Representational mind. Cambridge, MA:  The MIT Press; 1991.

Presissler MA, Carey S. Do both pictures and words function as symbols for 18-24 month old children? Journal of Cognition and Development 2004;5: 185-212.

Preissler MA.  Associative learning of pictures and words by low-functioning children with autism. Autism 2008; 12:229-246.

DeLoache JS, Burns NM. Early understanding of the representational function of pictures. Cognition 1994; 52:83-110. [PubMed: 7924202].

Barrera ME, Maurer D. Recognition of the mother’s photographed face by the 3 month old infant.  Child Development 1981; 52: 716-716.

deSchonen S, Mathviet E. Hemispheric asymmetry in a face discrimination task in infants.  Child Development 1990; 61: 1192-1205 [PubMed: 2209189].

Werner, H.; Kaplan, B. Symbol Fountain. An organismic developmental approach to language and expression of thought. New York:  John Wiley & Sons, Inc. 1964.

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