The Acquisition of American Sign Language by Deaf Children with Delayed Input

University Of Connecticut, Storrs CT

Investigators

Abstract

This research concerns effects of both the nature and the timing of linguistic input on the course of language acquisition. For most children, first language acquisition is facilitated by exposure to the native language from birth, with a fluent language model. However, some deaf children lack sufficient auditory input for the normal acquisition of a spoken language, and their exposure to a signed language may be delayed by several years. This project examines the course of acquisition of American Sign Language (ASL) by deaf children who did not begin to experience exposure to this language until after the age of 5 years - nowadays, an uncommon experience. Such a delay in language exposure may well result in qualitative as well as quantitative differences as compared with normal language acquisition. The project involves longitudinal recording of the language development of a small group of deaf children with delayed exposure. The longitudinal videotaping of spontaneous, natural interactions with caregivers and experimenters is supplemented with periodic structured activities designed to asses the children's language with respect to particular grammatical elements. These experiments will involve comprehension, judgment, and elicitation tasks targeting both sentence structures which are expected to be more easily acquired and those expected to be problematic. Results from this group will be compared with children's language acquisition in several other situations. The study proposed includes testing both language-matched and age-matched control groups of deaf children whose exposure to ASL began at birth from their deaf, signing parents. The spontaneous production data will be compared with similar data from a separate on-going study of early syntactic development by i) deaf children acquiring ASL with exposure from birth; ii) deaf children acquiring ASL with exposure by the age of two years; iii) normally hearing children acquiring English; iv) normally hearing children acquiring Spanish; and v) normally hearing children acquiring Japanese. By studying children acquiring languages with varying syntactic structures, as well as children whose exposure begins at different times, we aim to examine the contributions of variations in input structure as well as variations in input timing on the course of acquisition. Studies of the acquisition of language with delayed exposure will help in the effort to disentangle some of the factors which influence the course of language acquisition even in the normal situation, helping researchers to pinpoint those aspects of language which must be in-born and those which require experience to develop. Such studies can also provide evidence regarding the critical period hypothesis, the idea that without exposure to language during the early critical period of life, children are not able to use the mental resources normally employed in language acquisition and will therefore never achieve complete adult-like fluency. In ordinary circumstances, this hypothesis is impossible to test, since ordinarily children receive linguistic input from birth. Deaf children whose exposure to ASL begins later are a unique group for this kind of study. These studies also have important social and educational implications for teachers and parents grappling with the question of how to provide deaf children with all possible advantages. A better understanding of the effects of early versus delayed linguistic input on the acquisition of ASL is crucial for improved decision-making.