The purpose of this study was to obtain data on the developmental stages that deaf children pass through in acquiring the adult form of pronominal classifiers in American Sign Language, by obtaining data on production, comprehension, and imitation from nine children aged three to eleven years. All nine children are congenitally, profoundly deaf and have deaf parents. In all cases classifiers were mastered much later than would be predicted from a timetable for signs with similar structure. Evidence was found for a developmental sequence and for acquisition strategies similar to those that have been identified for hearing children learning a spoken language; e.g. handshapes that could be produced correctly in non-classifier signs were replaced by motorically easier handshapes in classifier signs made by children in this study. It is suggested that this is the result of complexities associated with classifier usage.
This article explores social processes related to the social competence of children evident in preschools and to researchers' collaborative efforts to understand it. Drawing examples from the authors' respective programs of research in the United States and Australia, we demonstrate how preschool children struggle to construct their full social membership in classroom discourse -to achieve the often simultaneous accomplishment of oneself as a student, peer, and gendered person. With regard to research processes, we demonstrate how researchers with different but compatible theoretical/research perspectives may widen their interpretive lenses through collaborative dialogue, the yield being a more multifaceted vision of young children's social competence.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.