Everything Old is New Again: Observations from the Nineteenth Century about Sign Communication Training with Mentally Retarded Children

Contemporary reviews of sign communication training programs for mentally retarded children indicate that such programs are of recent origin. Examination of an 1847 report by W. R. Scott, however, reveals that sign communication training with mentally retarded children was used successfully during the last century. The children in Scott’s report were described as acquiring signs and demonstrating improvement in their personal and social behavior. These findings are similar to those reported in recent research. It is not clear why this promising approach was not more widely adopted, although biases last century against sign language and negative characterizations of mentally retarded children probably contributed to its disappearance. The efficacy of sign communication training was to be re-discovered more than a century after Scott’s report.