An article in UConn Today has revealed how researchers are examining whether deaf children should learn sign language to give them the best chance of developing language and other skills at the same rate as non-deaf children.
Extract:
A team of researchers at the University of Connecticut is reexamining a decades-long debate as to whether deaf children should learn sign language to maximize their potential for optimal development.
Research has shown that children born deaf frequently exhibit learning deficits and as a result, often underperform in school. Yet research on deaf children has also found children from signing families develop language, cognition and literacy on normal timetables.
One widespread view is that learning deficits stem from lack of auditory experience. And, with the advent of universal newborn hearing screening and improved technologies such as cochlear implants – surgically implanted devices that provide access to sound – more and more deaf children are relying on spoken language from an early age.
While some herald this as a victory, others point to the variability in spoken language outcomes as evidence that excluding sign language may be a risky approach.
“The problem is that we can’t reliably predict who’s going to succeed with the spoken-language approach, and who isn’t,” said Matthew Hall, postdoctoral fellow and the lead researcher. “By the time it’s clear that a child’s spoken language proficiency hasn’t supported healthy development across the board, it may be too late for that child to master sign language.”
Read the full article here: http://today.uconn.edu/2016/02/study-of-cognitive-development-in-deaf-children-revisits-longstanding-debate/?utm_source=FacStaffDailyDigest&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=UConnTodayDailyDigest
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Cathy
February 12, 2016
This research will prove interesting, but I cannot support the ascertion that deaf children who fail to make headway educationally through normal speech pathways, cannot then learn sign language because its too late.
I have to say this viewpoint is not backed up by any ancedotal evidence is it? It is only an opininion or prediction. Where is the statistical evidence?
I am deaf and learnt through normal speech channels, nobody signed to me in any shape or form as a child. I did learn to finger spell for a Brownie badge, but that’s all. I did not touch on full sign language until my early 20s when I attended the deaf club with my baby son.
I picked up sign language in its natural setting in real time with deaf people. It was not difficult to pick up and I only asked what something meant on very odd occassions. Nobody can tell me that for deaf children to learn sign language later on is too late. It is never too late to learn.
I do feel, however, that learning outcomes for sign language maybe skewed due to the grammar of the language; the unauthentic environment (learning it in class) and the tutor themselves. Some tutors are better than others, but many hearing teachers are skewing the language because they are not deaf and therefore do not utilise the language in a natural way.
I do hope deaf children can develop bilingually but I fear this is unlikely to happen given the state of funding for education, chronic shortage of teachers, non signing families with a deaf child and the deaf child themselves. As most deaf children are now fitted with cochlear implants, some practically from birth, how many are going to use sign language or even attempt it, when they have access to sound? Hardly any.
These variables will be very difficult to alter and nobody can force anyone to use sign language. The real problem is the fact that one only needs sign language or requires it because they have no access to sounds. Once access is gained this parable disappears!
Hartmut
February 12, 2016
I have been engaged in assessing communication and language proficiency assessment on deaf children, adolescents and adults for nearly 20 years.
Facit as far as I can ascertain: The following relates to those who have hearing parents, and have been born deaf or deafened before age 4. That is, their language acquisition is most unlike to hearing children and deaf children of deaf parent(s).
1. The top of 5 to ten percent of the deaf (2 standard deviations above mean), regardless of the extent of inability to hear, will perform well linguistically and academically, no matter the method of language acquisition, be it purely oral/aural, combined, or sign language first and then spoken language (like from deaf parents or older deaf siblings), That is where the above commenter Cathy and my case falls in. I am the only deaf person in my family, my school is monolingual in German with teachers throwing in signs when communicating with us.
2. The middle 2/3 of the population will perform at inferior levels. They are semi-lingual either in English or any other spoken language alone or both in English and sign language. The latter is also true for my classmates in my school, even though teachers employ signs to support speech, and have low reading ability to understand newspapers, letters, books, and often also comics completely, They as a rule may require the intermediary services of a Deaf bilingual to understand a hearing signer or interpreter.
That is what the researchers from UConn (they are not alone, confirm several prior researches) talk about the “too late to master sign language” if the initial (oral) monolingual approach fails.
3. A great majority of Deaf children of deaf parents become bilingual and can succeed in academic environments. 90 % of them enter colleges and universities.
4. Lately I noticed better results of the performances of deaf children of hearing parents who learned to sign in their child’s early language development. This is attested to the research by K.Heiling in Sweden, where schools for the deaf are bilingual by law.
http://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED392189.pdf.
Some of these do not perform well in writing in English with grammatical errors. But their reading levels are still better than the average of deaf children. Despite their below-bar English competency, they have at least full competence in sign language. They would not require Deaf intermediary interpreters.
Cathy
February 13, 2016
Hartmut, it is good to have a German’s viewpoint! Iam not sure that the research carried out either in Germany or Sweden, would be replicated exactly the same in England.
I do not know of any deaf children who once using sign language, as a first language, then develop spoken language. This most certainly does not apply to my generation: it may have more substance with today’s deaf children. But, as they are mainly deaf children with cochlear implants, I assure you they are not learning sign language first, but spoken language. Personally, I have met one girl who had a CI but could use some sign language, but this is because she was not fitted with a CI until about 9yrs old. So, sign language was her first language.
I wonder how many of the 5 -10 per cent of your deaf population actually is? In Britain, it is still a struggle to raise academic levels in deaf children and that is in spite of the majority of them having CI’s fitted. It is well known that many deaf children have a reading ability between 7-9yrs old, way behind their peers. For my generation this statistic would be lower, so there has been marginal academic improvement.
This low level attainment, does not sit well with your ascertion that “no matter the method of language acquisition”. I feel it matters very much indeed, because it shows that deaf children need sign language first and foremost in order to understand further and which would support the raising of academia. Or, at least, academics think it would.
Perhaps in Germany the effects are different, but not in Britain and British Teachers do not “throw in signs” as they are going along! British Deaf children have sign language support workers in class (or they should have) and this is what has raised attainment levels, to some degree.
I do not quite understand why a Deaf bilingual would need intermediary services in order to understand an interpreter or hearing signer? If they are truly bilingual, no intervention, of any kind would be needed, surely?
In spite of full competence in sign language, would deaf children not need interpreters to access lessons in their classes? Unless all teachers are bilingual themselves? I do not think we can apply what happens in Germany or Sweden to what is happening in Britain due to completely different operational factors.