Language Development

1
Language Development

• Prelinguistically Deaf Children

2
Interaction Between Adults and Young Children

• Adults speech to infants differs from speech
  with other adults
• Shorter, simpler sentences
• More pronounced prosodic elements (pitch, rhythm)
• More repetition and looking behaviors
• Mutual and loving interactions

3
DCDP

• Deaf mothers interactions are very similar to
  hearing mothers with hearing children
• Extended, complex, elaborated and child-initiated
  interactions
• Sustained for long periods of time
• Elaborated on ideas in reciprocal fashion
• Reflected a mature conversational interactional
  style
• Apparent enjoyment of the communication

4
DCHP

• Hearing mothers
• Spoke less
• Use atypical intonation patterns
• Less likely to use tutorial strategies
• Less likely to give verbal praise
• Were more dominant in their interactions
• Utterances functioned to control or direct
  behavior

5
DCHP cont

• Mothers may initially engulf her deaf child with
  language stimulation to compensate for the
  sensory loss
• But, may inadvertently begin to control the
  interactions
• The child may not make attempts to continue the
  communication.

6
Communicative Intent

• Gesture systems develop prior to formal
  expressive language
• Deaf children exhibit communicative intents and
  semantic functions that are considered
  prerequisites to communicative competence.
• Deaf children followed the same continuum of
  language development as hearing children but
  delayed.

7
Semantic DevelopmentVocabulary

• Common words similar to hearing children
• People close to them, mommy, daddy
• Objects they could manipulate, shoe, sock
• Names of objects and actions, cat, dog, open,
  move, hop.
• Developmental stages for language acquisition
  were the same as hearing children but delayed.

8
Semantic DevelopmentLater Vocabulary
Development

• Functional knowledge of semantic information and
  finer syntactic properties of lexical items is
  limited
• In an ASL study, 3-11 year old deaf children of
  deaf parents used classifiers appropriately at
  age 3.

9
Syntax and Morphology

• DCHP produced 0-9 words at 18 months of age
• Combined words at approximately 26 months of age
• If using some form of manual communication,
  combined words at 17-18 months of age and
  vocabularies of 20-30 words
• The order of acquisition of English morphology is
  similar to hearing children but much delayed.

10
Developing Language in Deaf Children

• The need to communicate precedes the ability to
  communicate.
• Deaf children develop gesture and pointing
  systems to communicate their needs and interact
  with others.
• Hearing children accompany their gestures with
  vocalizations and by year 1 with words
• Deaf children do not.

11
Interaction is Essential to Language Development

• For optimal language learning, deaf children must
  participate in communication rather htan being
  merely the targets for language stimulation.
• Unfortunately passive participation frequently
  becomes the pattern.
• Deaf children should be encouraged to participate
  in communication.

12
Prosodic Elements of Language

• Appear to be more important than words.
• Hearing children babble, coo and mothers respond
  to these prelinguistic vocalizations
• Deaf children are unable to perceive these
  elements.
• Deaf Parents might be utilizing different
  elements (e.g., facial expression, eye blinks,
  tongue movements, speed and size of sign
  movements)

13
Form of Adult Input

• Influences early language development
• Fluent communication interaction between deaf
  children and mature language users must occur.
• Unfortunately this is not the case with hearing
  mother/deaf child interactions and too often the
  case with hearing teachers.

14
Feedback to Children

• How well the child is representing their intended
  meaning is important.
• Positive reinforcement is necessary to maintain
  and improve a behavior.

15
Deaf Childrens Syntax

• Grows slowly
• Follows patterns
• Deaf children begin combining words or signs at a
  later age than hearing children.
• English syntactic structures in deaf children
  seems to follow the same stages and sequences as
  hearing children though at a slower rate.

16
Basic Processes of Language Development

• Of hearing children is directly applicable to
  language development in deaf children
• Emphasis should be on communication
• Teachers language should be somewhat more
  advanced than the childs current level
• Child should be encouraged to communicate
• Communication should be reinforced
• New language information should be provided
  through natural language processes such as
  imitation and expansion