A longitudinal study of sign language acquisition was conducted with 13 very young children (median age 10 months at outset of study) of deaf parents. The children's sign language lexicons were examined for their percentages of iconic signs at two early stages of vocabulary development. Iconic signs are those that clearly resemble the action, object, or characteristic they represent. Analysis of the subjects' vocabularies revealed that iconic signs comprised 30.8% of the first 10 signs they acquired. At age 18 months, the proportion of iconic signs was found to be 33.7%. The finding that a majority of signs in the subjects' early vocabularies were not iconic suggests that the role of iconicity in young children's acquisition of signs may have been overrated by some investigators, and that other formational features may be of greater importance in influencing young children's ability to acquire signs.

The relationship between parental risk condition and parents' sensitivity to infants' cues was measured in one father-infant and 59 mother-infant dyads. Parents were videotaped at home, playing with their infants. Systematic differences in interactional patterns were found across six parental risk groups--neglectful, abusing, mentally retarded, low-income, deaf, and middle class (non-risk) parents. Sources of differences are discussed and implications for intervention strategies are offered.

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The acquisition of the formational aspects of American Sign Language signs was examined in nine young children of deaf parents. Videotape records of early sign language development were made during monthly home visits. The study focused on the acquisition of the three principal formational components of any ASL sign: location, movement, and handshape. Beginning with the children’s initial sign productions, the location aspect was produced correctly in most instances. The movement aspect was produced significantly less accurately than locations, and handshapes were the least accurate formational aspect. There was little change over time in production accuracy for sign locations and movements. In contrast, the children’s accuracy of handshape production improved significantly over the ages included in this study (5–18 months).

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