Co-Creating Meaning

Part 2: Bodily Emotional Traces

Bernadette Van Den Tillaart & Lauri Triulzi

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Overview of this Learning Activity

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As noted in Learning Activity 1, this module is designed to teach you how to co-create meaning with students who are deaf-blind, in order to help them develop early communication skills.

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Here again is the list of the 4 aspects of co-creating meaning that are covered in the module:

• Shared Experiences
• Bodily Emotional Traces (the impressions that our experiences leave behind)
• Expressions (use of a movement, sound or touch to express that a student remembers using that same movement, sound or touch in a previous experience)
• Shared Meaning (both persons understand what the expression means and can use it in communication)

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Overview of this Learning Activity (cont.)

• In the previous lesson, you began to learn how to share experiences with a student.
• In this one, you will learn how to use shared experiences to create shared memories that can be used as a basis for communication.
• It involves something called bodily emotional traces.
• This is probably an unfamiliar term to you, but don’t worry. By the end of the presentation, it will make sense.

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Remembering

• Think about an enjoyable experience you had with a friend.
• You might not remember everything, but that’s okay. You will recall some parts of it.
• Perhaps you remember something you saw, heard, did, or felt emotionally. Maybe you remember something your friend said.
• You might remember where you were, who else was there, or a topic of conversation.

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Remembering (cont.)

• The things you remember from the experience are those that left a strong impression on you.
• Often the things that leave the strongest impressions are those in which you feel emotionally involved.
• Emotions help us remember.

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Sharing Impressions

• Now imagine that you run into your friend with whom you had the enjoyable experience.
• Together you reminisce about the things you saw, heard, did, and talked about.
• You bring up memories that made a strong impression on you.
• Your friend brings up memories that had a strong impression on her.

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Sharing Impressions (cont.)

• Perhaps you and your friend discover that you both remember the exact same thing. You have a shared memory of your experience!
• Maybe you had forgotten one of your friend’s memories, but when she talks about it (perhaps pantomiming what happened) you remember!

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Building Shared Memories With a Student

• When an intervener and a student share an experience and understand each other, it provides a chance for them to create similar memories.
• They might remember something just because it gave them joy.
• They might remember something because it was stressful.

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Building Shared Memories With a Student (cont.)

• Shared memories help people understand each other as they reminisce about previous experiences.
• An intervener can build shared memories with a student by having shared experiences with her.
• When an intervener would like a student to remember something particular about an experience, she can emphasize it. This helps the student remember that particular element of the experience as part of the shared memory.

Shared Memories Come from Shared Experiences

• Do you remember the video from the previous presentation of Max eating breakfast with his intervener Beth?
• In that video clip, Max followed the scooping movement that Beth made with his hand, but he brought the spoon up by himself.
• Let’s see what happened next.

Beth Makes a Change in the Experience

Audio Description and Transcript

Beth Makes a Change in the Experience (cont.)

• Did you see how Max was willing to follow Beth’s suggestion to make the eating movement without a spoon?
• Beth “pantomimed” eating. Max was not really eating. It was “as if” he was eating.
• The movement represented eating, but it was not the eating experience itself.

Building a Memory Trace

(Making the Eating Movement Again)

• In the following clip, Beth again makes the eating movement without a spoon.
• Max follows her hand.
• Beth stops the movement just before Max’s mouth.
• Max knows that there is no food. He wants to go back to his bowl. But when Beth’s hand does not move, will Max finish the eating movement without the spoon?

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Building a Memory Trace

(Making the Eating

Movement Again)

Audio Description and Transcript

Building a Memory Trace

• The breakfast experience leaves “memory traces.” Max and Beth will not remember every breakfast detail, but they will remember certain things that left a strong impression.
• What Beth was doing in the video clip was helping Max build a “mental picture” or memory of an eating movement.
• Max may remember the pantomimed “eat” movement and his eagerness to eat with the spoon.
• The memory trace was something like this: Eating with a spoon is like holding your hand in a fist with a hole in it at chest level, turning and bringing it up to your mouth, and bringing it back down again, with a feeling of excitement.

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Experiences Involve Our Bodies and Our Emotions

• Experiences always have both bodily and emotional components.
• In the clip you just watched, Max was:
• doing things with his body (reaching, leaning forward, grasping and bring the spoon up) and
• perceiving things with his body (Beth’s touch; the taste of the food; the heaviness, balance, and shape of the spoon).
• He was also experiencing emotions
• perhaps confusion because there was a change in the routine (Beth made the eating movement without the spoon)
• perhaps eagerness or eat.

Experiences Involve Our Bodies and Our Emotions (cont.)

The emotions Max experienced influenced the speed, rhythm, and pressure of what he did and perceived with his body.

• When he felt the eating movement without a spoon, he seemed to hesitate.
• He slowed down his movement and paid attention to the change he could perceive with his hands.
• When he felt the spoon again, he grasped tight and eagerly accelerated the eating movement.

Bodily & Emotional Experiences Blend Together

• Our bodies perceive with our senses what happens in and around us (touch, see, hear, taste, smell, proprioception). This is part of an experience.
• Our bodies also do things (moving, sitting still, eating, exploring, hugging someone). This is also part of an experience.

Bodily & Emotional Experiences Blend Together (cont.)

• We feel our emotions and express them through our bodies. This is part of an experience as well.
• Emotions we feel are varied:

amusement displeasure

boredom happiness

sadness affection

joy pleasure

anger anxiousness

During an experience, our bodies and emotions influence each other. They are never separate.

Bodily Emotional Traces

of an Experience

• Experience leave memories.
• Experiences end, but they leave impressions (traces) in our memories.
• Since we can’t remember every detail of an experience, what we tend to remember are the moments that leave the strongest impression on us.
• Probably it was something we perceived or something we did and how we felt about it emotionally.

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Bodily Emotional Traces of an Experience (cont.)

• Some experts refer to the impressions that experiences leave on us as “bodily emotional traces” or BETs.

[Source: Vege, Bjartvik & Nafstad, 2007]

• This terminology is common in European deaf-blind education.
• As the name implies, bodily emotional traces are impressions of:
• things you experienced with your body

and

• emotions that you felt and expressed during that experience.

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Bodily Emotional Traces of an Experience (cont.)

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• Bodily emotional traces are what our experiences leave behind.
• You can think of them like impressions in the sand that your feet leave behind when you walk on a beach. You are no longer there, but you left something from your experience behind.

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Bodily Emotional Traces:

An Example

• As we go forward, for simplicity, we will primarily refer to bodily emotional traces as just “traces.”
• Let’s think about traces that might be left by the experience of sliding down a slide.
• Bodily traces:
• moving quickly down the slide with arms stretched in the air.
• feeling air “whoosh” against the skin.
• Emotional traces:
• the feeling of excitement (excited shriek and happy laugh) while sliding.

Simulation Exercise Review

• Now that you have learned about traces, think back to the simulation exercise you did before starting this slide presentation.
• You were asked to help your partner put on a coat. Your partner was wearing a blindfold and something to minimize her hearing.

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Simulation Exercise Review (cont.)

• Review your responses to the questions you answered during the Tactile Memory Simulation.
• What did you think left the strongest trace (impression) on your partner? What was most memorable for her?
• Following the simulation, your partner told you what left the strongest impression on her. What did she say?
• You will share your answers to these questions on the discussion board when you finish this slide presentation.

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Simulation Exercise Review (cont.)

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Maybe the trace was about:

• What she felt with her hands or in her body.
• What she did by herself.
• What she felt emotionally.
• The ways that she communicated with you and you with her.

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Shared Memory Traces

• To share an experience and associated memory traces of someone who is deaf-blind, we need to pay attention and imitate (affirm) his movements and manner of touching.
• If you do this with a student, you will experience the same tactile sensations in your own body and hands that the student feels in his.
• Later on, after the original experience has passed, this strategy will help you to recognize his touch and movements as tactile memory traces.

Sighted-Hearing Traces

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When you can hear and see, your traces of what happened in an experience might be about:

• Something you saw.
• Something you heard.
• Something you did (e.g., how you moved).
• Maybe something you felt by touch.
• Something you felt in your body.
• Something you felt emotionally.
• Something you communicated about with spoken words.

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Deaf-Blind Traces

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When you cannot hear and see, your traces of what happened in the experience are about:

• Something you felt by touch.
• Something you did with movements.
• Something you felt in your body.
• Something you felt emotionally.
• Something you communicated about.

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Deaf-Blind Traces (cont.)

• If the person with deaf-blindness has some partial vision or hearing, their traces may have visual or auditory elements.
• In order to decipher what a student perceives visually or auditorily:
• be aware of the sights and sounds that occur during an experience
• try to determine what (if anything) he looks at or listens to
• observe how he responds to anything he looks at or listens to

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Deaf-Blind Traces (cont.)

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• As with movements and tactile experiences, it may be helpful to affirm the behaviors the student exhibits as he tries to see and hear (including sounds he makes).
• This allows you to experience what those behaviors feel like in your own body so that you can later recognize them as visual or auditory memory traces.

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Example: Megan

• Let’s watch some more video examples.
• On the next slide, you will see Megan. She is profoundly deaf, but has some sound perception with her hearing aids. She is also blind.
• As you watch, think about what might be most the most memorable part of the experience for Megan?
• Which one or two bodily emotional traces do you think she will remember?

-- A movement? A sound? A touch? All three?

• Why do you think so?
• Make a note of your answers in your intervener journal. We will come back to this video later in the module.

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Example: Megan

Audio Description and Transcript

Example: Zoe

• On the next slide you will see a video clip of Zoe. She has some sound perception with her cochlear implant. She is also blind.
• Make a guess about traces that are left in Zoe’s memory as a result of this experience.
• What movement, sound, or touch might be most memorable for her?
• Why do you think so?
• Might the intervener have the same traces?
• Make a note of your answers to keep for later reference. We will come back to this video later in the module.

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Example: Zoe

Audio Description and Transcript

Where are traces?

• You cannot see the actual traces that are left from an experience.
• They are embedded in the wholeness of the body-emotions-mind of a student.
• If you actively participate hands-on with a student, you might have similar traces from the shared experience in your own body-emotions-mind.�

Traces: Summary

• Students with deaf-blindness are already familiar with the world from a deaf-blind perspective.
• Every student with deaf-blindness has had countless experiences.
• A student will not remember everything, but he will have countless memory traces in his mind and body about these experiences.
• Traces of movements, touch, possibly visual images or sounds, and emotions are meaningful for him.

Traces: Summary (cont.)

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• Many of a student’s experiences might not have been recognized by their hearing-sighted partners.
• By affirming and sharing the student’s experience, and by emphasizing certain movements or touches, a hearing-sighted partner can build memory traces that are similar to the student’s.
• Experiences and memory traces are starting points for us to help them develop meaningful communication.

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Traces: Summary (cont.)

Bernadette describes how students with deaf-blindness process and store experiences in their memories.

Transcript

OHOA Deaf-Blind Intervener Learning Modules

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A national resource designed to increase awareness, knowledge, and skills related to the process of intervention for students who are deaf-blind. Developed by National Consortium on Deaf-Blindness.

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For more information, contact NCDB at

info@nationaldb.org.

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The contents of this presentation were developed under a grant from the U.S. Department of Education #H326T130013. However, those contents do not necessarily represent the policy of the The Research Institute, nor the US Department of Education, and you should not assume endorsement by the Federal Government. Project Officer, Jo Ann McCann.

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