Parental Hearing Status and Signing among Deaf and Hard of Hearing Students

Abstract

On average, deaf and hard of hearing school-age children who have deaf or hard of hearing parents differ from those who have hearing- only parents in their signing experiences at home and school, as well as in their degree of hearing loss. The findings reported here, based on an analysis of data from the 2001�2002 Annual Survey of Deaf and Hard of Hearing Children and Youth, indicate that having at least one deaf parent is the most powerful indicator of the likelihood that the student is in a home where signing is used regularly and in a classroom where signing is a primary mode of communication used for instruction. Having just one hard of hearing parent (and no deaf parent) greatly reduces the likelihood that the child is receiving instruction in sign language or regularly signs at home. Parental hearing status is also associated with the child�s degree of hearing loss, however; understanding the relationship between parental hearing status and signing experiences must thus be tempered by the fact that the physiological imperative for visual communication is frequently a result of genetic inheritance.

American Sign Language Syntax and Analogical Reasoning Skills Are Influenced by Early Acquisition and Age of Entry to Signing Schools for the Deaf

“…School records on whether students had Deaf parents allowed us to categorize those students as being native signers, meaning exposed to sign from birth. We categorized students with hearing parents as non-native signers, meaning that exposure to ASL before entry into the school of assessment was likely either absent or erratic in nature (Mitchell and Karchmer, 2005). Our primary variables were thus: (1) Native/non-native signing, and (2) Age of entry to the current school of assessment.…”

“…The label “native” was given to participants who had at least one Deaf parent. The rationale for this categorization is that 92% of families with two Deaf parents use ASL at home and 84% of families with one Deaf parent use ASL at home (Mitchell and Karchmer, 2005). We thus considered 244 students to be native signers.…”

“…Although the native signing group was smaller than the non-native signing group, they composed 35% of the sample population of this study. This is a significant representative sample considering it is estimated that only 5–10% of Deaf children are born to Deaf parents (Mitchell and Karchmer, 2005). …”

“…The primary barrier to acquiring sign language as a first language is that 95% Deaf children are born to hearing, non-signing parents, who most frequently use only spoken language (Mitchell and Karchmer, 2005). According to survey research from 2009 to 2010, 5.8% of hearing parents in the US reported using ASL (Gallaudet Reseach Institute, 2011).…”

Bullying and Cyberbullying Among Deaf Students and Their Hearing Peers: An Exploratory Study

“…Weiner & Mak, 2009). Deaf children, particularly those who grow up in homes where the rest of the family is hearing (at least 90%; Mitchell & Karchmer, 2005), do not have the experience of incidental learning of social information common in hearing children. That is, hearing youth acquire social information by overhearing conversations of others in the environment, or by interpreting intonation or innuendo in spoken language (Kusché, Garfield, & Greenberg, 1983).…”