study guide ....

SIGNED LANGUAGE The Acquisition of American Sign Language (ASL)

Goals

¨  Examine sign language acquisition in three different conditions ¤  Deaf children of Deaf Parents ¤  Deaf Children of Hearing Parents ¤  Hearing Children of Deaf Parents

Language Acquisition in Deaf Children

¨  Deaf Children of Deaf Parents (~4% of deaf children are born to deaf parents) ¤  Native Signers: learn sign language from their

environment ¤  Learn ASL as a first language at home ¤  Some language milestones at the same age as hearing

children, but some are reached sooner n  Manual Babbling (~6 months) n  First sign occurs BEFORE their first birthday (motor skill

development occurs before vocal tract development)

Language Acquisition in Deaf Children

¨  Deaf Children of Hearing Parents (vast majority of deaf children grow up in hearing families) ¤  May be several years old before their first exposure to

sign language n  Hearing loss may not be detected immediately n  Parents are not native signers

¤  Late learners of sign language n  Reduced ability to produce and comprehend signed

language n  Confuse signs n  Inappropriate substitutions

Language Acquisition in Deaf Children

¨  Hearing Children of Deaf Parents ¤  Bimodal bilinguals

n  Sign language at home n  Spoken language in school

¤  Code blending—signed and spoken language are often produced simultaneously

Language Acquisition in Deaf Children

¨  Learning to Read ¤  Developmental gap compared to same-age hearing

individuals n  Late start on sign language n  Underdeveloped spoken language skills n  Decreased phonological awareness

Conclusions

¨  Deaf children of deaf parents learn sign language in the same way that hearing children learn speech

¨  Most deaf children are born to hearing parents, who can’t sign, as a result their language acquisition is delayed

¨  Hearing children of deaf parents learn sign language at home and speech outside of the home