Acquisition of Sign Language

1. Acquisition of Sign Language By: Melissa Engelking

2. Facts… • Only 5-10% of kids born deaf are born to deaf parents. The other 90-95% are born to hearing parents. • Most deaf children learn sign language later in life (from peers, not parents) • Some deaf and hearing impaired people use other ways of communicating.

3. Other ways of communicating • Oral training • Manual English-ex: fingerspelling the letters of the English alphabet

4. The different stages found in oral language • Babbling • One-word • Two- word

5. Are the developmental stages in oral language the same for deaf children? • Babbling… • Petitto and Marentette (1991) Studied deaf children that learned ASL as a first language. • Their results showed that the infants engaged in two types of manual activity- gestures and syllabic manual babbling. • The results showed that the babbling in deaf babies was similar to those with normal hearing

6. Are the developmental stages in oral language the same for deaf children? • When compared to the manual activity of hearing babies with hearing parents, both the deaf babies and hearing babies used gestures and manual babbling. • Manual babbling was more frequent in deaf babies. • When comparing manual babbling in hearing kids either who had learned speech alone or sign language alone, babies exposed to signs tended to use hand babbling that was more systematic.

7. Are the developmental stages in oral language the same for deaf children? • One word stage- • Prinz and Prinz(1979) observed one child who was bilingual in speech and ASL. The baby had produced their first sign at 7mo, at 12 mo they produced 5 signs and 1 word. • Orlanksky and Novack (1983) did the same study, but had 10 hearing babies and 1 deaf baby. This time the parents were both deaf, and the study was done over a 16 month period. • The results pointed out that the first recognizable sign was given at approximately 8.5 mo. This is 2-3 months before their first spoken word.

8. Orlansky and Bonvillian (1984) observed the prevalence of ionic signs in hearing babies from deaf parents. They had observed the kids at two points when the kids had 10 signs (about 13 mo) and again at 18 mo. At 10 signs= 31% iconic signs, 34% were metonymic signs, and 35% were arbitrary signs At 18 mo= The percentages were very close. With these results they were able to conclude that iconic signs were not a major factor in the precocious acquisition of sign language. Ionic signs- these are signs that are clear and transparent from the sign and its meaning. An example of this is when someone wants to communicate eat, and they rapidity move their hand to their mouth. Metonymic signs- these are signs that are not likely to have an apparent relationship between the sign and the referent. Arbitrary Signs-these have no relationship at all between the sign and the referent. Are the developmental stages in oral language the same for deaf children?

9. Are the developmental stages in oral language the same for deaf children? • Petitto(1988) observed the fact deaf kids were able to use sign to name objects at around 12.6 mo, this is about the same age that hearing kids would use referential speech.

10. Are the developmental stages in oral language the same for deaf children? • Early Multiple Sign Utterances- it has been found that deaf kids use semantic relations just like those found in hearing children. The order in which the relations show up usually come in the same order as other previous studies of English.

11. Summery… • The course of language development is somewhat similar in both hearing and deaf children. • The only difference is that the early acquisition of signs at the one word stage. This however reflects modality rather then language.