Videotaped samples of interaction were collected from seven deaf mothers and deaf children, 14 hearing mothers and deaf children using oral-only communication, 14 hearing mothers and deaf children using simultaneous (oral + sign language) communication, and 14 hearing mothers and hearing children. Transcripts were coded for dyadic interaction and for functional communication. Deaf children and hearing mothers using oral-only communication spent significantly less time engaged in interaction than did mothers and children in the other three groups. These dyads also had the least numbers of child-initiated bouts and the highest proportion of nonelaborated bouts. Deaf mothers and deaf children were similar to hearing mothers and hearing children; hearing mothers and deaf children using simultaneous communication were intermediate in interactional complexity. The major finding is that which affirms the similarities between the deaf-mother/deaf-child pairs and the hearing-mother/hearing-child pairs. The children in these two groups share an ability to carry on conversations about themselves, their mothers, and nonpresent objects and events.
This longitudinal case study examined the language and literacy acquisition of a Deaf child as mediated by her signing Deaf parents during her first three years of life. Results indicate that the parents’ interactions with their child were guided by linguistic and cultural knowledge that produced an intuitive use of child-directed signing (CDSi) in American Sign Language (ASL) and that the child developed in ways similar to her hearing, speaking counterparts. Parental attention to eye gaze and eye contact, especially prior to the advent of the first sign, are described, as are the ways they mediated their child’s transference of knowledge about their visual language, ASL, to printed English. These findings demonstrate that when deaf children are immersed in a visually accessible natural language environment from birth, they can participate in the kinds of mediated interaction that provide the linguistic resources and the cognitive mapping necessary for increasingly complex development. Implications for the development of deaf children are addressed in light of continuing reports of underachievement in this population, whose members are typically deprived of the linguistic and cognitive resources afforded by early immersion in a natural signed language.
Success in teaching deaf pupils to read has not increased in many decades, but new conceptualizations of literacy, clear understanding that deafness is a human condition not a deficit, and recent research on how deaf families accomplish what schools often do not–all point to better ways of introducing deaf children to written language.
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