One way of increasing caregivers’ language accessibility when interacting with a deaf child is through visual communication strategies. By using both a longitudinal and cross-sectional approach, this study will reveal which strategies deaf and hearing parents prefer and implement in their daily communication with their deaf children. First, the interactions of one deaf and two hearing mothers with their deaf children were recorded over the course of 18 months starting when their children were 6 months of age. Second, interactions of 5 mothers and 5 fathers (i.e. each two deaf and three hearing) with their deaf children (24 months old) were analysed for implicit and explicit strategy-use. It indicated gender related differences and confirmed caregivers’ tendencies to rely on strategies closely related to the modality of their mother tongue. Finally, deaf parents outperformed the hearing parents in the duration of successful interaction moments with their deaf children.
This study addresses the topic of visual communication and early sign language acquisition in deaf children with a Flemish Sign Language (Vlaamse Gebarentaal or VGT) input. Results are obtained through a checklist focusing on sign-exposed deaf children’s visual communication and early sign language acquisition: the adapted VGT Visual Communication and Sign Language checklist. The purpose is to obtain the first detailed picture of these children’s visual and early VGT acquisition and to determine the optimal support for the checklist’s ongoing standardization process. At the time of testing, all children were 24-months old and had been diagnosed with a severe or profound hearing loss before the age of 6 months. Half of the children were being raised in deaf families with native VGT exposure, while the other half were from hearing families with no prior VGT knowledge. All parents declared VGT accessibility to the child and that they used VGT in the home. Resulting from this study is the identification of five early visual communication items as being potentially good indicators of later (sign) language development. Further, concerns were put forward on the lack of ongoing visual, communication, and language support for deaf children and their parents in Flanders.
This case study provides a first exploratory study on the early Flemish Sign Language acquisition of a deaf infant from the perspective of Halliday’s Systemic Functional Theory. It highlights some remarkable aspects of sign language acquisition with respect to interpersonal interaction between the child and its mother. The free play interactions of the Deaf mother and her moderately deaf daughter were recorded when the child was 6, 9, 12, 18 and 24 months old. These interactions were annotated in ELAN and transcribed in view of the analysis adapting Systemic Functional Linguistics. The analysis indicates that the early sign language development of the child chronologically correlates with Halliday’s descriptions of the universal functions of language. The infant’s first lexical signs appeared at 12 months. The child produced one-sign utterances (12 months and older), one-sign utterances along with a pointing sign (18 months and older) and two-sign utterances (24 months). The mother integrated attentional strategies to redirect the child’s attention. She also adopted techniques that are appropriate for child-directed signing, i.e. questions, recasts and expansions.
The focus of this chapter is on how signed words are processed in relation to spoken ones, and whether the profound differences in how the two word types are articulated and perceived affect these processes. The form of words in sign languages, signs, is characterized by an architecture identical to that of spoken words, namely coordinated patterning between two language levels, meaning and articulatory patterning. The lexical architecture of sign differentiates it from that of gesture, which lacks this coordinated, bi-level linguistic structure. The patterning of sign phonology arises from the fine motor patterns of the fingers with the larger ones of the arms, torso, and head. Children’s lexical acquisition reveals how their analytic skills in phonological and morphological acquisition are tied to their early control of the visual field for inter-personal communication. Adult sign access and processing are governed by lexical structure and significantly modulated by prior linguistic experience.
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