Improved support for deaf children born to hearing parents to be explored in £1m study

Researchers at the University of East Anglia (UEA) are to investigate how to best help deaf children from hearing families with language acquisition, it has been announced.

One out of every 1,000 children is born deaf, with 90% of these reportedly born to hearing parents.

UEA academics are looking to monitor the impact of reduced language access on deaf babies and toddlers within the first two years of their lives.

It’s hoped the £1 million project, to take place over four years, will uncover new ways to improve early support for deaf children and their families.

Lead researcher Dr Teodora Gilga said: “We want to better understand how access to language shapes early cognitive development.

“Most hearing parents use a spoken language as their primary language, which is at least partially inaccessible to their deaf child. Deaf parents, however, use sign language, which is fully accessible to the child.

“While many families choose for their children to have a cochlear implant, many deaf children still enter school with less developed language and learning outcomes compared to their hearing peers.

“We want to better understand the large variation in communicative development and school readiness of deaf children born to hearing parents.”

As well as involving researchers from the UEA’s School of Psychology, academics from London universities Goldsmiths and Birkbeck will also collaborate on the project.

The study will use eye tracking, as well as brain imaging processes such as electroencephalography (known as EEG), to understand how pre-verbal children respond to images of “familiar or unfamiliar categories”.

Dr Gilga added the “early development” of what’s known as “learning categories” are a “key building block for cognitive development”.

She said: “One way in which children discover categories such as ‘cars’, ‘dogs’ or ‘food’ is by learning that they share a common label – for example, two different looking dogs [still] being called ‘dog’.

“This is exactly the type of information that deaf children whose parents mainly use spoken language may be missing out on some of the time.

“We want to find out how a reduced access to labelling impacts on category knowledge in deaf children in hearing families. The research will also ask whether hearing parents of deaf children find alternative ways of communicating about categories with their children.”

As well as analysing the learning of these categories, academics also hope to look at the impact sign language can have on early learning.

Dr Gilga continued: “Some hearing parents of deaf children learn sign language, but it may take time for them to reach the fluency required for conversation.

“But even signing with lower proficiency may support the learning of categories and this may explain why deaf children that have some sign language exposure tend to fare better academically.”

Hearing families with deaf babies under the age of one are being invited to take part in the research, with selected children partaking in tests in Norwich Castle to see how they learn as they navigate the museum’s galleries.

The project was funded by the Economic and Social Research Council, which hopes the findings will help “both support services and parents learn more about enabling these children to thrive”.

Parents interested in finding out more information about the study can email the UEA at child.scientist@uea.ac.uk.

By Liam O’Dell. Liam is an award-winning Deaf freelance journalist and campaigner from Bedfordshire. He can be found talking about disability, theatre, politics and more on Twitter and on his website.