Skip to main content
European Commission logo print header
Content archived on 2022-11-15

Multilingual & multiple lexical learning on CD-I environment

Objective

SYMBOL involves the creation of a lexical learning system for all target groups experiencing communication distress due to an inability to link the signified (images) to their signifiers (words expressed in spoken or sign language or written). The SYMBOL system will help the user to find the signifier by navigating in a menu of pictures and words. The two primary groups concerned are thus aphasics and the deaf. Although these persons control language with difficulty, they nonetheless possess a non-verbal representation of objects and actions which condition their world and their lives. By extension, the project will hold interest for all individuals learning a language, including young children, the illiterate, and people learning a foreign language.

With the interactive procedure incorporating the signified (picture of objects) and the signifiers (word, gestures, pictograms), users are able to acquire new vocabulary or to extend their existing lexical base with a user-friendly database.

The prototype will consist of a CD-I including an image bank of still pictures involving the home environment: The Home. The user is able to access these images either through the path set by the system, or through itineraries which he or she can choose individually. For each object or action selected, which remains visually displayed in a window on the screen, the user finds a spoken and written representation, in a choice of 7 European languages: the pronunciation in audio, the common spelling, and the phonetic transcription (International Phonetic Alphabet). The complementary database offers other signifier choices. For the time being, these are limited to their equivalents in French Sign Language (FSL) and the visual form of French words in Cued Speech (CS).

The technological innovation resides essentially in the creation of a universal system of navigation in a CD-I programme to establish the base for a true author system through a network of European co-producers. A CD-I configuration has been chosen over a PC (DV-I) environment in order to open access to the widest public possible.

The psycho-pedagogical innovation lies primarily in the possibility of triple access to this pictionary: by logical choice, by accumulating or eliminating attributes, and by visual selection. For the user, this means new independence and freedom to create his own itineraries, thus further enriching the contents. Although research in vocal synthesis is very active, the development of non- verbal languages has so far been confined to the production of specific local and partial language dictionaries, which are available in printed form or, at best, on computer.

The extension of the project is aimed at the creation of a lexical generator of CD-I applications allowing users, via their institutions, to co-produce learning environments. The project will supply a learning kit including an applications executor, the "HOME" environment CD-I, and an accompanying guide for the use and creation of applications.

The CD-I author system will be composed of the standardised generator BALBOA, of an editor, and of a learner mode executor designed to pilot the future rewritable CD-I. The user-producer network will make it possible to pool and thus optimise experience and knowledge through a proximity tutoring device.

The extension will involve the following main steps, in consecutive order: creation of a linguistic, graphical and technical architecture, and a tree-like
navigation path that can be modelled to all microworld of real objects;
technical development of the CD-I author system;
pressing of a final version of the Home universe;
writing of the User's Guide;
development of the Teaching Kit to be distribute through the user-producer network;
longitudinal evaluation of the adoption of the CD-I The Home.

The industrialisation of the product will benefit on the one hand from the marketing policy planned for the CD-I by Philips and Sony, and on the other hand, from the contacts that will be established with specific target groups in international networks to demonstrate the educational value of the system. The constitution of a user network for production and distribution will ensure an attractive market.

This lexical learning system offers two key advantages. First, it takes into account specific particularities (individuals experiencing communication difficulties) while operating with a general public technology (CD-I). Secondly, it permits an enrichment of the contents by the users, who thus exchange their knowledge and optimise their experience through auto-production.

The consortium is composed of an organisation of parents of deaf children developing and providing educational support for the children, industrialists specialised in the CD-I production and research institutions with strong background in linguistics and system development.

Topic(s)

Data not available

Call for proposal

Data not available

Funding Scheme

Data not available

Coordinator

Association Nationale des Parents d'Enfants Déficients Auditifs (ANPEDA)
EU contribution
No data
Address
10 Quai de la Charente
75019 Paris
France

See on map

Total cost
No data

Participants (3)