Characteristics That Contribute to Effective Simultaneous Communication

Abstract

Simultaneous communication (SC) is commonly used in deaf education. Since it is not always totally successful, it is important to determine what characteristics influence its success. In an earlier study, Stinson, Newell, Castle, Mallery-Ruganis, and Holcomb (1989) identified a number of characteristics deemed important for comprehension, based on interviews with deaf professionals. Our study followed up on the earlier study. Three videotapes used in the previous study were independently measured and evaluated on the basis of the characteristics that had been identified as important. Our study largely confirmed the previous findings. What seemed to contribute most to successful SC were clear lip movement, fingerspelled support for potentially ambiguous signs, eye contact, communication of mood and attitude, modality match, and grammatical facial expression. Equally important was the need to match the semantically appropriate sign to the particular sense of an English word rather than use a superficial one-to-one correspondence. In addition, the results suggest that with deletions, the types rather than the number are crucial in determining comprehension and comfort. It was also found that the perception of pace does not always match actual pace and that the perception of pace can be influenced by other factors.