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The Role of Color Cues in Facilitating Accurate and Rapid Location of Aided Symbols by Children With and Without Down Syndrome

Michael Carlin
University of Massachusetts Medical School, Eunice Kennedy Shriver Center

Jennifer Thistle
Emerson College

Contact author: Krista Wilkinson, Communication Sciences and Disorders, Emerson College, 120 Boylston Street, Boston, MA 02116. E-mail: krista_wilkinson{at}emerson.edu.

Purpose: This research examined how the color distribution of symbols within a visual aided augmentative and alternative communication array influenced the speed and accuracy with which participants with and without Down syndrome located a target picture symbol.

Method: Eight typically developing children below the age of 4 years, 8 typically developing children over the age of 4 years, and 10 children with Down syndrome participated. Participants were asked to find a target line drawing among an array of 12. Line drawings represented either foods (e.g., grapes, cherries), clothing (e.g., a red shirt, a yellow shirt), or activities (e.g., soccer, swimming). In one condition, symbols that shared a color were clustered together, creating a subgroup within which to search. In another condition, symbols that shared a color were distributed across the display, allowing each to appear individually. Dependent measures were accuracy and speed of finding the target symbol.

Results: Clustering same-color symbols facilitated the speed of locating the target for all participants, and facilitated search accuracy in the younger preschool children and participants with Down syndrome. These effects held when targets were foods, clothing, or activities.

Conclusion: Clinicians should consider the internal color of visual symbols when constructing aided symbol displays, at least for children with Down syndrome. Further research is needed on a number of dimensions, however, including visual processing in other etiological categories, the role of background color, and the relation of color to other stimulus dimensions.

Key Words: aided symbols, visual processing, visual search, symbol identification