Developmental Path in Input Modifications and the Use of Iconicity in Early Hearing Infant–Deaf Mother Interactions

Fuks, Orit

doi:10.1353/aad.2020.0028

Cited by 2 publications

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“…While these findings support our work, it is important to note that all our contexts were ostensive, with the toys present throughout the interaction, which may have impacted the likelihood of iconic signs being lengthened. Though Perniss et al do not report the proportion of each kind of modification in their study (enlargement, repetition, and lengthening), Fuks (2020) found that when signs were phonetically modified, they were most likely to be repeated or enlarged, not lengthened. Seeing as our study did not analyze other forms of modification, iconic signs may have been emphasized in other ways within the corpus.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 82%

“…Here too, the ways iconic signs are produced may account for their overrepresentation in children’s early vocabularies. Support for this account comes from a longitudinal case study of two Deaf mothers using Israeli Sign Language with their hearing children, reporting that signs were most likely to be repeated, lengthened, enlarged, or displaced (“phonetically modified”) when children are aged 10–14 months, but more likely to be produced with an iconic modification—using iconic mimetic body/mouth/vocal gestures—when children are aged 16–20 months ( Fuks, 2020 ). These results offer early suggestions that parents may systematically produce iconic signs in child-directed interactions in ways that make them easily learned.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Do parents modify child-directed signing to emphasize iconicity?

et al. 2022

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Iconic signs are overrepresented in the vocabularies of young deaf children, but it is unclear why. It is possible that iconic signs are easier for children to learn, but it is also possible that adults use iconic signs in child-directed signing in ways that make them more learnable, either by using them more often than less iconic signs or by lengthening them. We analyzed videos of naturalistic play sessions between parents and deaf children (n = 24 dyads) aged 9–60 months. To determine whether iconic signs are overrepresented during child-directed signing, we compared the iconicity of actual parent productions to the iconicity of simulated vocabularies designed to estimate chance levels of iconicity. For almost all dyads, parent sign types and tokens were not more iconic than the simulated vocabularies, suggesting that parents do not select more iconic signs during child-directed signing. To determine whether iconic signs are more likely to be lengthened, we ran a linear regression predicting sign duration, and found an interaction between age and iconicity: while parents of younger children produced non-iconic and iconic signs with similar durations, parents of older children produced non-iconic signs with shorter durations than iconic signs. Thus, parents sign more quickly with older children than younger children, and iconic signs appear to resist that reduction in sign length. It is possible that iconic signs are perceptually available longer, and their availability is a candidate hypothesis as to why iconic signs are overrepresented in children’s vocabularies.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 82%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Do parents modify child-directed signing to emphasize iconicity?

et al. 2022

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Infants’ Use of Iconicity in the Early Periods of Sign/Spoken Word-Learning

Fuks

2022

The Journal of Deaf Studies and Deaf Education

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The aim of this research was to analyze the use of iconicity during language acquisition of Israeli Sign language and spoken Hebrew. Two bilingual-bimodal infants were observed in a longitudinal study between the ages of 10–26 months. I analyzed infants’ production of iconic words, signs, and gestures. The results showed that infants’ use of vocal iconicity reached its peak between the ages of 16–20 months. The proportion of imagic iconic signs in the infants’ lexicon was also high during that period. In contrast, the infants’ use of iconic gestures gradually increased during the study period, as well as their co-production with lexical items. The results suggest that infants’ use of lexical and gestural iconicity scaffold the learning of novel labels and fill the gap in their expressive repertoire. It was concluded that teachers/therapists should use iconicity and encourage their students to use it in pedagogical settings.

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Developmental Path in Input Modifications and the Use of Iconicity in Early Hearing Infant–Deaf Mother Interactions

Cited by 2 publications

References 0 publications

Do parents modify child-directed signing to emphasize iconicity?

Do parents modify child-directed signing to emphasize iconicity?

Infants’ Use of Iconicity in the Early Periods of Sign/Spoken Word-Learning

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