Language development is an important facet of early life. Deaf children may have exposure to various languages and communication modalities, including spoken and visual. Previous research has documented the rate of growth of English skills among young deaf children, but no studies have investigated the rate of ASL acquisition. The current paper…

Sometimes parents just do not know where to begin once their child has been diagnosed as deaf or hearing impaired. This booklet helps answer some of the questions these parents might have. A resource section has been included for parents and professionals for future reference. One of the most important things to remember is that, once a child has…

Deaf and Hard of Hearing (DHH) children need to master at least one language (spoken or signed) to reach their full potential. Providing access to a natural sign language supports this goal. Despite evidence that natural sign languages are beneficial to DHH children, many researchers and practitioners advise families to focus exclusively on spoken…

Once their child has been diagnosed as deaf or hearing impaired, parents may not know what to do. This booklet will help answer some of the questions these parents might have. A resource section has been included for parents and professionals on pages 43-44, for future reference. One of the most important things to remember is that, once a child…

This qualitative, longitudinal, single-case study analyzes naturalistic interactions in Swedish Sign Language. Multiple interactions took place mainly between a mother and a deaf twin on twelve occasions. The participants' actions and language structure are examined as the child progressed from ten to forty months of age. The results are presented…

Sometimes parents just do not know where to begin once their child has been diagnosed as deaf or hearing impaired. This booklet will help answer some of the questions parents might have. A resource section has been included for parents and professionals on pages 43-44, for future reference. One of the most important things to remember is that,…

Age of acquisition (AoA) effects have been used to support the notion of a critical period for first language acquisition. In this study, we examine AoA effects in deaf British Sign Language (BSL) users via a grammaticality judgment task. When English reading performance and nonverbal IQ are factored out, results show that accuracy of…

Teaching sign language--to deaf or other children with special needs or to hearing children with hard-of-hearing family members--is not new. Teaching sign language to typically developing children has become increasingly popular since the publication of "Baby Signs"[R] (Goodwyn & Acredolo, 1996), now in its third edition. Attention to signing with…

Three experiments examined the relation between language acquisition and other symbolic abilities in 18- and 26-month-olds. Found that 18-month-olds spontaneously interpreted gestures, like words, as names for object categories. At 26 months, they spontaneously interpreted words as names and novel gestures as names only when given additional…

Studies the simultaneous language development in American Sign Language and spoken English by a hearing girl. Findings show: (1) a mixture of oral and manual babbling, (2) a code-switching ability across modalities, and (3) a single syntactic system incorporating rules from both languages but with two separate lexicons. (Author/PJM)

Studies the developmental stages deaf children pass through in acquiring the adult forms of pronominal classifiers in American Sign Language. Data were obtained on production, comprehension, and imitation from nine children aged 3 to 11. Complexities of classifier usage influence the learning strategies used. (PJM)

Acquisition of passive and active vocabulary in sign and oral language was analyzed in 2 children congenitally deaf, through age 54 months. Acquisition of sign occurred more quickly than oral language. Production of active nouns, function words, and "wh" question words in sign was equivalent to that of hearing peers, and was later transferred to…

Reports on a study which followed the language development of a hearing son of deaf parents from his seventeenth month to twenty-third month. Various aspects of the child's language acquisition in sign and speech are described, as is his early ability to alternate languages (sign and speech) according to addressee. (SED)

This case study describes a 25-year-old Swedish woman with hereditary moderate hearing loss since birth who acquired both sign language and spoken language in her early preschool years and reached normal developmental milestones in each. Analysis revealed that her speech reading expertise is associated with cognitive functions such as high…

This study examined the prelinguistic communicative behaviors of 48 young Israeli children with hearing impairments (ages 8 months to 49 months). Most subjects were severely hearing impaired. Ninety percent were born to hearing parents. A parent questionnaire utilizing a direct observation methodology in six situational contexts was selected,…