The impact of input quality on early sign development in native and non-native language learners

Lu, Jenny; Jones, Anna; Morgan, Gary

doi:10.1017/s0305000915000835

Cited by 89 publications

(23 citation statements)

References 45 publications

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“…While many parents continue to speak to their deaf infant after the early diagnosis of deafness and up to the point of the CI procedure, profound deafness is a major barrier to the uptake and storage of spoken phonology during this early sensitive period. Although parents sometimes use a signed language during this early period, the input they provide is typically at a basic level because they usually begin to learn a signed language only after their child is diagnosed with a hearing impairment (Lu, Jones, & Morgan, 2016). Moreover, despite advancing CI technology, these devices provide a reduced version of the auditory signal so that, once hearing is restored, input, although improved, may remain impoverished to some degree.…”

Section: Delayed Exposure To Language With or Without Prior Exposurementioning

confidence: 99%

Variations in phonological working memory: Linking early language experiences and language learning outcomes

Pierce

Genesee

Delcenserie

et al. 2017

Applied Psycholinguistics

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In order to build complex language from perceptual input, children must have access to a powerful information processing system that can analyze, store, and use regularities in the signal to which the child is exposed. In this article, we propose that one of the most important parts of this underlying machinery is the linked set of cognitive and language processing components that comprise the child's developing working memory (WM). To examine this hypothesis, we explore how variations in the timing, quality, and quantity of language input during the earliest stages of development are related to variations in WM, especially phonological WM (PWM), and in turn language learning outcomes. In order to tease apart the relationships between early language experience, WM, and language development, we review research findings from studies of groups of language learners who clearly differ with respect to these aspects of input. Specifically, we consider the development of PWM in children with delayed exposure to language, that is, children born profoundly deaf and exposed to oral language following cochlear implantation and internationally adopted children who have delayed exposed to the adoption language; children who experience impoverished language input, that is, children who experience early bouts of otitis media and signing deaf children born to nonsigning hearing parents; and children with enriched early language input, that is, simultaneous bilinguals and second language learners.

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Section: Delayed Exposure To Language With or Without Prior Exposurementioning

confidence: 99%

Variations in phonological working memory: Linking early language experiences and language learning outcomes

Pierce

Genesee

Delcenserie

et al. 2017

Applied Psycholinguistics

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“…The vast majority of deaf children who are exposed to signing, however, begin to learn sign language from hearing parents. Although these hearing parents choose to expose their deaf child to a sign language, they are themselves adult late learners of sign with limited fluency (Mitchell & Karchmer, 2004;Lu, Jones & Morgan, 2016); the children are also exposed to spoken language, although access to speech is limited because of the child's deafness. These deaf children of hearing parents thus develop a form of bilingualism across both spoken and signed languages (Woll, 2013), but their acquisition of each is likely delayed when compared both to native signing peers (deaf or hearing) acquiring a signed language and hearing speaking peers acquiring a spoken language.…”

Section: Vocabulary Development and Gesture In Deaf Learners Of Sign mentioning

confidence: 99%

Deaf and hearing children’s picture naming

Thompson

England

Woll

et al. 2017

LIA

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Deaf and hearing children's picture naming Impact of age of acquisition and language modality on representational gesture. This is the accepted version of the paper.This version of the publication may differ from the final published version.Permanent repository link: http://openaccess.city.ac.uk/21631/ Link to published version: http://dx. AbstractStefanini, Bello, Caselli, Iverson & Volterra (2009) reported that Italian 24-36 month old children use a high proportion of representational gestures to accompany their spoken responses when labelling pictures. The two studies reported here used the same naming task with (1) typically developing 24-46 month old hearing children acquiring English and (2) deaf children of deaf and hearing parents aged 24-63 months acquiring British Sign Language (BSL) and spoken English. In Study 1 children scored within the range of correct spoken responses previously reported, but produced very few representational gestures. However, when they did gesture they expressed the same action meanings as reported in previous research. The action bias was also observed in deaf children of hearing parents in Study 2, who labelled pictures with signs, spoken words and gestures. The deaf group with deaf parents used BSL almost exclusively with few additional gestures. The function of representational gestures in spoken and signed vocabulary development is considered in relation to differences between native and non-native sign language acquisition.

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“…However, the vast majority of deaf children—approximately 95%—are born to hearing parents who do not sign (Mitchell and Karchmer ) and so they do not usually have access to sign language, at least during the early stages of language acquisition (Lu et al . ). Deaf children as a group are therefore at high risk of language delays.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 97%

“…Signed languages provide a more easily accessible language input, and for the small proportion of deaf children who are born to deaf signing parents ('native signers') signed language development can proceed with very similar milestones and timescale to spoken language acquisition in hearing children (Anderson and Reilly 2002, Mayberry and Squires 2006, Newport and Meier 1985. However, the vast majority of deaf children-approximately 95%are born to hearing parents who do not sign (Mitchell and Karchmer 2004) and so they do not usually have access to sign language, at least during the early stages of language acquisition (Lu et al 2016). Deaf children as a group are therefore at high risk of language delays.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Semantic fluency in deaf children who use spoken and signed language in comparison with hearing peers

Marshall

Jones

Fastelli

et al. 2017

Intl J Lang & Comm Disor

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BackgroundDeafness has an adverse impact on children's ability to acquire spoken languages. Signed languages offer a more accessible input for deaf children, but because the vast majority are born to hearing parents who do not sign, their early exposure to sign language is limited. Deaf children as a whole are therefore at high risk of language delays.AimsWe compared deaf and hearing children's performance on a semantic fluency task. Optimal performance on this task requires a systematic search of the mental lexicon, the retrieval of words within a subcategory and, when that subcategory is exhausted, switching to a new subcategory. We compared retrieval patterns between groups, and also compared the responses of deaf children who used British Sign Language (BSL) with those who used spoken English. We investigated how semantic fluency performance related to children's expressive vocabulary and executive function skills, and also retested semantic fluency in the majority of the children nearly 2 years later, in order to investigate how much progress they had made in that time.Methods & ProceduresParticipants were deaf children aged 6–11 years (N = 106, comprising 69 users of spoken English, 29 users of BSL and eight users of Sign Supported English—SSE) compared with hearing children (N = 120) of the same age who used spoken English. Semantic fluency was tested for the category ‘animals’. We coded for errors, clusters (e.g., ‘pets’, ‘farm animals’) and switches. Participants also completed the Expressive One‐Word Picture Vocabulary Test and a battery of six non‐verbal executive function tasks. In addition, we collected follow‐up semantic fluency data for 70 deaf and 74 hearing children, nearly 2 years after they were first tested.Outcomes & ResultsDeaf children, whether using spoken or signed language, produced fewer items in the semantic fluency task than hearing children, but they showed similar patterns of responses for items most commonly produced, clustering of items into subcategories and switching between subcategories. Both vocabulary and executive function scores predicted the number of correct items produced. Follow‐up data from deaf participants showed continuing delays relative to hearing children 2 years later.Conclusions & ImplicationsWe conclude that semantic fluency can be used experimentally to investigate lexical organization in deaf children, and that it potentially has clinical utility across the heterogeneous deaf population. We present normative data to aid clinicians who wish to use this task with deaf children.

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The impact of input quality on early sign development in native and non-native language learners

Abstract: This is the accepted version of the paper.This version of the publication may differ from the final published version. Permanent repository link:

Cited by 89 publications

References 45 publications

Variations in phonological working memory: Linking early language experiences and language learning outcomes

Variations in phonological working memory: Linking early language experiences and language learning outcomes

Deaf and hearing children’s picture naming

Semantic fluency in deaf children who use spoken and signed language in comparison with hearing peers

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