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Early vocabulary development in deaf native signers: A British Sign Language adaptation of the communicative development inventories
Abstract
There is a dearth of assessments of sign language development in young deaf children. This study gathered age-related scores from a sample of deaf native signing children using an adapted version of the MacArthur-Bates CDI (Fenson et al., 1994).
Parental reports on children's receptive and expressive signing were collected longitudinally on 29 deaf native British Sign Language (BSL) users, aged 8-36 months, yielding 146 datasets.
A smooth upward growth curve was obtained for early vocabulary development and percentile scores were derived. In the main, receptive scores were in advance of expressive scores. No gender bias was observed. Correlational analysis identified factors associated with vocabulary development, including parental education and mothers' training in BSL. Individual children's profiles showed a range of development and some evidence of a growth spurt. Clinical and research issues relating to the measure are discussed.
The study has developed a valid, reliable measure of vocabulary development in BSL. Further research is needed to investigate the relationship between vocabulary acquisition in native and non-native signers.
... This is because only 5% of DHH children (Mitchell & Karchmer, 2004) acquire sign language under typical circumstances, i.e., from birth and from DHH parents who are themselves sign language users. For the remainder of children with hearing parents, families must learn sign language once deafness has been identified, and parents frequently fail to develop sufficiently high levels of fluency to keep pace with children's developmental needs (Woolfe et al., 2010). As a result, exposure to sign language in the home is often reduced in quality and quantity (Lu et al., 2016;Marschark, 2002). ...
... The challenges facing test developers when designing assessments of sign language have been discussed extensively elsewhere (e.g., Woolfe et al., 2010;Herman, 2015;Enns et al., 2016), therefore we provide only a brief overview here. There are challenges in relation to the small size of the DHH community, and correspondingly to the size of samples included in test development. ...
... Some researchers have defended their sample size, arguing that it represents a much larger proportion of the potential population than is found in any spoken language test standardizations. For example, Woolfe et al. (2010) point out their sample size of 29 native signers represented approximately 30% of the estimated number of DHH children born to DHH parents in the UK within the designated age range (8-36 months). Others have addressed the issue of sample size by developing and piloting a measure on native signers, but extending data collection to a wider sample including non-native signers for the development of test norms (Herman et al., 1999;Rosenburg et al., 2020). ...
Since the late nineties, several assessments to track and assess sign language acquisition in deaf and hard of hearing (DHH) children have been developed and standardised for some sign languages (Herman, Rowley, Mason, & Morgan, 2014; Rosenburg, Lieberman, Caselli, & Hoffmeister, 2020). These assessments have provided important insights into how DHH children acquire sign language and how acquisition can be impacted by developmental or acquired disorders (Mason et al., 2010; Quinto-Pozos, Forber-Pratt, & Singleton, 2011). Moreover, the development of sign language assessments has enabled research studies to show associations between language, cognitive skills and literacy (Botting et al., 2017). The availability of sign language assessments has confirmed that DHH children from DHH, signing families achieve similar milestones in sign language as their hearing counterparts in spoken language. Yet the measures developed to date are insufficient for tracking bimodal bilingual development in DHH children, particularly as children progress through the later school years. This article reviews hitherto mentioned and new issues in test development and standardization related to the status of sign language research, the size and nature of the population of DHH signers, and tester issues with a specific focus on assessments used by practitioners rather than those designed for research purposes. References are made to the reasons why DHH children are at risk for language delay. A selection of different types of sign language test is presented. In the UK and elsewhere, many of the tests developed to date have focused on the earlier stages of language development. We therefore include a description of a UK project that is adapting an assessment for adolescent signers.
... The CDI is a checklist in which parents, caregivers, or teachers indicate whether a child can comprehend and/or produce words/signs reflecting early language acquisition. It was developed originally for American English and was adapted to more than 60 spoken languages (Frank et al., 2017) including Hebrew (Maital et al., 2000) and several sign languages (e.g., Anderson & Reilly, 2002;Rodríguez-Ortiz et al., 2020;Sümer et al., 2017;Woolfe et al., 2010). The checklist includes hundreds of words representing different categories, such as predicates, nouns, and function words (Braginsky et al., 2016;Frank et al., 2017). ...
... By means of hearing aids and cochlear implants, deaf children born to deaf parents have access to auditory input that allows them to acquire the spoken language at younger ages in its spoken modality. In previous studies, native signing toddlers are defined as monolinguals because they were exposed only to a sign language (e.g., Woolfe et al., 2010). The children in the current study were early bimodal-bilinguals. ...
... If two different Hebrew words had one shared translation, the more generic (common) translation was included (e.g., the words "maxbi," meaning to hide and "mitxabe," meaning to hide oneself are represented in one sign HIDE). e. Body parts that are signed with pointing were excluded to prevent the inclusion of indexical points that could be considered less lexical and would not have been counted in the language productions of hearing children (though they might also be present in those children), following Woolfe et al. (2010). f. ...
The current study described the development of the MacArthur–Bates Communicative Developmental Inventory (CDI) for Israeli Sign Language (ISL) and investigated the effects of age, sign iconicity, and sign frequency on lexical acquisition of bimodal-bilingual toddlers acquiring ISL. Previous findings bring inconclusive evidence on the role of sign iconicity (the relationship between form and meaning) and sign frequency (how often a word/sign is used in the language) on the acquisition of signs. The ISL-CDI consisted of 563 video clips. Iconicity ratings from 41 sign-naïve Hebrew-speaking adults (Study 1A) and sign frequency ratings from 19 native ISL adult signers (Study 1B) were collected. ISL vocabulary was evaluated in 34 toddlers, native signers (Study 2). Results indicated significant effects of age, strong correlations between parental ISL ratings and ISL size even when age was controlled for, and strong correlations between naturalistic data and ISL-CDI scores, supporting the validity of the ISL-CDI. Moreover, the results revealed effects of iconicity, frequency, and interactions between age and the iconicity and frequency factors, suggesting that both iconicity and frequency are modulated by age. The findings contribute to the field of sign language acquisition and to our understanding of potential factors affecting human language acquisition beyond language modality.
... With regards to sign languages, CDI versions for American Sign Language (ASL; Anderson and Reilly, 2002) and British Sign Language (BSL; Woolfe et al., 2010) are available. In both cases, the age interval tapped by the scales (8-36 months) is higher than that employed to assess oral development (8-30 months). ...
... Regarding BSL, Woolfe et al. (2010) observed great heterogeneity both at the age and rate of the acquisition but, in general, they confirm an increment of signed lexicon like what is found in hearing children using oral language. This includes an acceleration in the acquisition of vocabulary, which occurs similarly in deaf children who acquire BSL and in hearing children who acquire oral English. ...
... This study presents data on the development of LSE in native signing children, hearing and deaf, with similar ages (8-36 months) to that of the previous adaptations of the CDI to American (Anderson and Reilly, 2002) and British (Woolfe et al., 2010) sign languages. Unlike the study of Pérez et al. (2013), all the participants of this study were children of signing deaf parents. ...
This article presents the adaptation of the MacArthur Communicative Development Inventory (CDI; Fenson et al., 1993, Guide and technical manual for the MacArthur Communicative Development Inventories. San Diego, CA: Singular Press; Fenson et al. 1994, Variability in early communicative development. Monographs of the Society for Research in Child Development, 59, 1-173) to Spanish Sign Language (LSE). Data were collected from 55 participants (32 boys and 23 girls; 17 deaf signers, 38 hearing signers) who, evaluated by their caregivers every 4 months, presented a total of 170 records. The parents reported the signs that the children could understand or produce between 8 and 36 months. Results suggested that the CDI adapted to LSE is a valid and reliable instrument. Signing children could understand more signs than they produced at this early developmental stage. There were no significant differences between boys and girls, or between deaf and hearing children. The development of LSE is similar to other sign languages, although with a lower production of signs in the early stages, perhaps due to the bilingualism of most of the children of our study.
... Using adult-reported retrospective ratings for age of acquisition, iconicity and familiarity, typical ages of vocabulary acquisition for the purpose of developing BSL norms were described by Vinson et al (2008). Norms for vocabulary development have also been reported on a small sample of native signing d/Deaf children aged 8 months -3 years using a BSL adaptation of the MacArthur Communicative Development Inventory (CDI) (Woolfe et al 2010). This study demonstrated the development of receptive and expressive vocabulary from first signs appearing when children were around one year old to some 3 year old native signing children reaching ceiling on the 500 signs in the CDI. ...
... Language development and disorder research in BSL was provided to inform this process (Quinto-Pozos et al., 2013;Rathmann et al., 2007;Woolfe et al., 2010). Some formal assessments that provide normed data were available and discussed during the information sharing sessions and are described in the assessment section. ...
... Before the commencement of this study, the literature had indicated that d/Deaf children could have language learning difficulties in BSL . While some BSL assessments were available (Herman et al., 2004(Herman et al., , 1999Woolfe et al., 2010), there was very limited literature on intervention or practitioner skills (Marshall & Morgan, 2015;Quinto-Pozos et al., 2011). Information was lacking from Deaf practitioners working in BSL about what they did when working with this client group or their perceived learning or support needs in working with these children. ...
Deaf practitioners, with varied backgrounds, training experience, roles and qualifications, currently work with d/Deaf children who have difficulties in their development of sign language. With the long term aim of improving practice, three questions were addressed: 1. How do Deaf practitioners (DPs) currently work with d/Deaf children who have language difficulties? 2. Can language therapy strategies and resources developed for spoken language be adapted for language therapy in BSL? 3. Can therapy strategy and resource use bring observable change to DPs’ therapeutic skills? The study had three phases. In Phase 1, questionnaires and focus groups asked DPs about current practice. In Phase 2, 4 DPs and the Speech and Language Therapist (SLT) researcher collaborated to deliver language therapy in BSL. Questionnaires, observation schedules and discussion gathered feedback from DPs. Phase 3, based on findings from Phases 1 and 2, comprised a training course for 17 DPs and SLTs. Theoretical information, with data examples from Phases 1 and 2, provided a basis for the training. Course participants provided information about their knowledge and confidence about language therapy in BSL before and after the course with their reflections on the usefulness of the information presented. In summary, the study confirmed that DPs have varying skills, knowledge and confidence. There are challenges for DPs, including accessing information on language disorder, language context, language mixing, and bilingualism. The roles of DPs and the availability of other professionals, such as SLTs, for co-working can make it challenging for practitioners to provide therapeutic intervention. DPs reported training and co-working aided their work. Participants identified a need for shared terminology to discuss language difficulties and intervention in English and BSL. A shared framework for assessment, goal setting, therapy and evaluation is needed. More accessible information, resources, training and supervision would support DPs and SLTs in this work.
... They found that the sequence and developmental trajectories of most linguistic structures in ASL go hand in hand with English. The CDI has also been adapted to BSL (Woolfe et al., 2010), and even though this study does not make a direct comparison between the lexical development of deaf and hearing children, it shows the typical learning trajectory of the CDI in which receptive skills precede productive ability. A different study measuring directly sign acquisition gives further evidence that deaf children follow the same developmental path as hearing children. ...
... This position would predict that deaf children will be biased to acquire signs representing actions because of the high degree of overlap between sign and referent (e.g., the sign TO-DRINK in many sign language has direct correspondences to the action of drinking). This prediction is supported by research showing that deaf children have a strong preference for predicates over nominals (Anderson and Reilly, 2002;Woolfe et al., 2010;Rinaldi et al., 2014); as well as action-based signs during production (Ortega et al., 2014(Ortega et al., , 2017 and comprehension tasks (Tolar et al., 2008). The close connection between real actions and action-based signs may aid the problem of referentiality and in turn jump-start vocabulary development (Imai and Kita, 2014). ...
... Of course, iconicity alone cannot explain sign acquisition because parental input (Perniss et al., 2017) and children's monitoring of signs' properties are also exploited to scaffold learning (Caselli and Pyers, 2017). In addition, other factors that have shown to impact lexical development in speech may also play a role in sign acquisition, for example parents' education (Woolfe et al., 2010), socio-economic status (Fernald et al., 2013), type of child-parent interaction (Bornstein et al., 2015), to name just a few. Understanding how these factors interact with certain types of iconicity will give a comprehensive picture of lexical development in deaf children. ...
The study of iconicity, defined as the direct relationship between a linguistic form and its referent, has gained momentum in recent years across a wide range of disciplines. In the spoken modality, there is abundant evidence showing that iconicity is a key factor that facilitates language acquisition. However, when we look at sign languages, which excel in the prevalence of iconic structures, there is a more mixed picture, with some studies showing a positive effect and others showing a null or negative effect. In an attempt to reconcile the existing evidence the present review presents a critical overview of the literature on the acquisition of a sign language as first (L1) and second (L2) language and points at some factor that may be the source of disagreement. Regarding sign L1 acquisition, the contradicting findings may relate to iconicity being defined in a very broad sense when a more fine-grained operationalisation might reveal an effect in sign learning. Regarding sign L2 acquisition, evidence shows that there is a clear dissociation in the effect of iconicity in that it facilitates conceptual-semantic aspects of sign learning but hinders the acquisition of the exact phonological form of signs. It will be argued that when we consider the gradient nature of iconicity and that signs consist of a phonological form attached to a meaning we can discern how iconicity impacts sign learning in positive and negative ways.
... Since the target group is relatively small and heterogenous (see section 1.1), all researchers argue that more data must be collected in future research to support their primary findings (Anderson & Reilly, 2002;Woolfe et al., 2010;Rodríguez-Ortiz et al., 2019;Novogrodzky & Meir, 2020). Work on CDIs in other cultures is also needed. ...
... This so-called 'starter list' was tested on children newly arrived at the school (p. 32).Woolfe et al. (2010) adapted the ASL-CDI version to create the BSL-CDI. It consists of 21 semantic categories since the "Body Parts" category is included. ...
Vocabulary size is a critical marker for language development. It serves as a predictor for future language development in spoken and/or sign languages. Given the relative lack of assessment instruments for sign language development in deaf children living in The Neherlands, we propose a lemma list for a future Communicative Development Inventory (CDI; Fenson et al., 1994) for Sign Language of the Netherlands (NGT): the NGT-CDI. When compiling this list of NGT lemmas, we compared the lemma lists of six sign languages (i.e., ASL-CDI, Anderson & Reilly, 2002; SLN-CDI, Hoiting, 2009; BSL-CDI, Woolfe et al., 2010; LSE-CDI, Rodriguez-Ortiz et al., 2019; ISL-CDI, Novogrodzky & Meir, 2020; DGS-CDI, Hennies et al., unpublished manuscript) and two spoken languages (MB-CDI, Fenson et al., 1994; N-CDI, Zink & Lejaegere, 2002). After a selection procedure, a proto list was compiled.
A pilot study was conducted to test whether the proto list was suitable for our intended target groups: young deaf children of deaf parents (DCDP) and deaf children of hearing parents (DCHP) between 8-36 months old. It is expected that DCHP, who are born in a hearing environment, will receive atypical sign language input because NGT is not the native language of their parents. In the pilot study, two DCDP and one DCHP were involved.
In general, we can conclude that the results show that the NGT lemma list is suitable for both target groups. This outcome is promising for the development of a future NGT-CDI that can be widely used.
Keywords: Sign language; early vocabulary development; assessment; deaf; CDI
... Several psycholinguistic studies have reported that signing children of deaf parents (i.e., native signers) show a linguistic development course similar to that of hearing children of hearing parents. For example, a lexical burst is observed around 16 to 20 months of age in SL development [35]. SL development starts at around 6 to 9 months with manual babbling, and production of the first signs is characterized by sign simplifications, substitutions, and reduplications depending on the children's motor limitations and the phonotactic constraints of their SL [36][37][38]. ...
... SL development starts at around 6 to 9 months with manual babbling, and production of the first signs is characterized by sign simplifications, substitutions, and reduplications depending on the children's motor limitations and the phonotactic constraints of their SL [36][37][38]. Like their speech-exposed counterparts, native signers produce their first signs around 10 to 12 months and also seem to organize their lexicon around semantic categories [35,[39][40][41]. ...
In psycholinguistics and clinical linguistics, the Sentence Repetition Task (SRT) is known to be a valuable tool to screen general language abilities in both spoken and signed languages. This task enables users to reliably and quickly assess linguistic abilities at different levels of linguistic analysis such as phonology, morphology, lexicon, and syntax. To evaluate sign language proficiency in deaf children using French Sign Language (LSF), we designed a new SRT comprising 20 LSF sentences. The task was administered to a cohort of 62 children– 34 native signers (6;09–12 years) and 28 non-native signers (6;08–12;08 years)–in order to study their general linguistic development as a function of age of sign language acquisition (AOA) and chronological age (CA). Previously, a group of 10 adult native signers was also evaluated with this task. As expected, our results showed a significant effect of AOA, indicating that the native signers repeated more signs and were more accurate than non-native signers. A similar pattern of results was found for CA. Furthermore, native signers made fewer phonological errors (i.e., handshape, movement, and location) than non-native signers. Finally, as shown in previous sign language studies, handshape and movement proved to be the most difficult parameters to master regardless of AOA and CA. Taken together, our findings support the assumption that AOA is a crucial factor in the development of phonological skills regardless of language modality (spoken vs. signed). This study thus constitutes a first step toward a theoretical description of the developmental trajectory in LSF, a hitherto understudied language.
... This situation may be achievable for deaf parents of DHH children. Indeed, evidence exists for a similar early vocabulary development in deaf native signers and TH children (Anderson & Reilly, 2002;Woolfe, Herman, Roy, & Woll, 2010; but see Rinaldi, Caselli, Di Renzo, Gulli, & Volterra, 2014). Anderson and Reilly (2002) administered the MacArthur Communicative Development Inventory for American Sign Language (MCDI-ASL) to a group 101 DHH children of deaf parents (ages 8-36 months). ...
... What has become clear is that DHH children of hearing parents, on average, fall behind in their vocabulary acquisition in signed language in comparison to DHH children of deaf parents (Hermans, Knoors, & Verhoeven, 2010;Novogrodsky et al., 2014;Woolfe et al., 2010). found that 4-to 12-year-old DHH children of hearing parents (N = 298) scored a half to one standard deviation below the mean of age-matched DHH children of deaf parents (N = 32) on one receptive and two expressive sign vocabulary tests. ...
The lexical quality hypothesis emphasizes the importance of the quantity and the quality of lexical knowledge for reading comprehension: children need to quickly and accurately access the meanings of the written words they encounter. This chapter discusses research on the quality and quantity of lexical representations in spoken language and in signed language in children with cochlear implants (CIs). It also describes the impact of three multimodal approaches that have been used to enhance the quantity and quality of lexical representations in deaf and hard-of-hearing children, including those with CIs: Cued Speech, orthographic information, and augmentative signs. The chapter argues that these three multimodal approaches are promising tools for enhancing the quality of lexical representations in spoken language in children with CIs.
... Further, despite the prevalence of predicates in the ASL input (Fieldsteel, Bottoms & Lieberman, in press), verbs are not overrepresented in children's expressive vocabulary; if anything, there is a slight noun bias (Anderson & Reilly, 2002). Longitudinal data from the BSL adaptation of the CDI shows some modest evidence of a vocabulary growth spurt at around 50 signs or between 16 and 19 months (Woolfe et al., 2010). Despite the broad parallels between sign and spoken language, several studies have also examined differences in vocabulary acquisition across modalities with respect to iconicity and phonology (Caselli & Pyers, 2017;Caselli & Pyers, 2019;Thompson, Vinson, & Vigliocco, 2012). ...
... To maximize the usefulness of this tool in detecting language delays in native signing children and language deprivation among deaf children exposed late to a sign language, we need norms from the very small subset of deaf children acquiring ASL natively (approximately 5-10% of deaf children in the U.S. and Canada). The sample size used here is two and three times the size of the other sign language adaptations of the CDI (Anderson & Reilly, 2002;Woolfe et al., 2010). ...
Vocabulary is a critical early marker of language development. The MacArthur Bates Communicative Development Inventory has been adapted to dozens of languages, and provides a bird’s-eye view of children’s early vocabularies which can be informative for both research and clinical purposes. We present an update to the American Sign Language Communicative Development Inventory (the ASL-CDI 2.0, https://www.aslcdi.org), a normed assessment of early ASL vocabulary that can be widely administered online by individuals with no formal training in sign language linguistics. The ASL-CDI 2.0 includes receptive and expressive vocabulary, and a Gestures and Phrases section; it also introduces an online interface that presents ASL signs as videos. We validated the ASL-CDI 2.0 with expressive and receptive in-person tasks administered to a subset of participants. The norming sample presented here consists of 120 deaf children (ages 9 to 73 months) with deaf parents. We present an analysis of the measurement properties of the ASL-CDI 2.0. Vocabulary increases with age, as expected. We see an early noun bias that shifts with age, and a lag between receptive and expressive vocabulary. We present these findings with indications for how the ASL-CDI 2.0 may be used in a range of clinical and research settings
... As with dynamic assessment, assessment should be about potential for achievement, not simply deficit focused. With deaf individuals in signing environments, existing standardised sign language assessments can be used (Enns et al., 2013;Herman et al., 1999;Woolfe et al., 2010), although norms based on typically developing individuals should be used with caution. Test results should always be supplemented with information about functional knowledge and use of signs. ...
... The sign vocabularies of hearing signers with intellectual disability are often small, so account should be taken of what they know, what they understand, how vocabulary is distributed across modalities, and how they use what they know. A sign-adapted test such as the BSL version of the MacArthur Communicative Development Inventories (Woolfe et al., 2010) may be useful. Alternatively, a customised vocabulary checklist can be used for staff and families to fill in, with columns for sign and speech. ...
... Respecto a la BSL, Woolfe et al. (2010) observan una gran heterogeneidad tanto en el momento en que comienza el desarrollo, como en el ritmo de adquisición pero, en líneas generales, constatan un proceso de incremento del léxico signado similar al que se encuentra en los niños y niñas oyentes respecto a la lengua oral, incluyendo las aceleraciones en la adquisición del vocabulario, que se dan de forma similar en los niños sordos que adquieren la lengua de signos británica y los niños oyentes que adquieren el inglés oral. A juicio de Woolfe et al. (2010), la discrepancia en la aceleración de adquisición del vocabulario que se da entre la lengua de signos americana y la lengua de signos británica puede ser debida a la diferencia en los intervalos de edad establecidos para la recogida de datos en cada una de las investigaciones(de seis meses en el ASL y de 4 meses en el BSL). ...
... Debido a la dificultad de encontrar muestras amplias de niños signantes nativos con edades comprendidas entre los 8 y los 36 meses se optó por recoger varias observaciones del desarrollo comunicativo de los niños, siguiendo un procedimiento similar al aplicado por Anderson y Reilly (2002) en su adaptación del CDI a la ASL y por Woolfe et al. (2010) en su adaptación a la BSL. De esta manera, cada niño ha sido evaluado cada cuatro meses hasta cumplir la edad de 36 meses. ...
El objetivo de esta comunicación es presentar el proceso de adaptación de una prueba de vocabulario
en español (Domínguez et al., 2014) a la lengua de signos española. Los modelos teóricos actuales,
proponen que la habilidad lectora puede ser descrita por dos componentes. Uno específico constituido por el conjunto de mecanismos de identificación de palabras escritas; y el otro, es no específico
de la lectura, y se refiere a la competencia lingüística, que también participa en la comprensión de la
lengua oral, y que puede ser evaluado con tareas de comprensión léxico-semántica.
Estos dos componentes explican en torno al 75% de la varianza de la comprensión lectora de personas
sordas, siendo los componentes no específicos, los conocimientos lingüísticos del lector, vocabulario
y sintaxis, los más explicativos (Domínguez et al., 2014). Por ello, consideramos fundamental disponer de pruebas que permitan valorar estas habilidades en estudiantes sordos. Su análisis permitirá
desarrollar estrategias educativas que contribuyan a la mejora de las habilidades necesarias para
aprender a leer y escribir. Además, nos encontramos con muchos alumnos sordos que adquieren la
lengua de signos y pueden aprenden a leer y escribir sobre su base lexical.
La necesidad de evaluar la lengua de signos, patente no sólo en los entornos educativos bilingües
(LSE-LO), sino también en el ámbito clínico del lenguaje (Valmaseda et al., 2013) han unido a miembros de entidades distintas como son la Universidad de Salamanca, el Equipo Específico de Discapacidad Auditiva de la Comunidad de Madrid y el departamento de LSE del Colegio Gaudem.
Palabras clave: evaluación, vocabulario, lengua de signos.
... Although most deaf children (67%) communicate orally (i.e., use spoken language), a minority (7%) use a sign language such as British Sign Language (BSL), and a significant proportion (26%) use a combination of modes, typically the use of key signs alongside spoken language, known in the United Kingdom and the United States as Sign Supported English (Consortium for Research Into Deaf Education, 2017). Although there are no barriers to deaf children accessing a visuogestural language such as sign, sign language acquisition is impacted by poor language exposure, as most deaf children have hearing parents who, in comparison with deaf parents, typically come to sign language late and struggle to achieve high levels of fluency (Woolfe, Herman, Roy, & Woll, 2010). As a consequence, many signing deaf children frequently experience significant language delays (Woolfe et al., 2010). ...
... Although there are no barriers to deaf children accessing a visuogestural language such as sign, sign language acquisition is impacted by poor language exposure, as most deaf children have hearing parents who, in comparison with deaf parents, typically come to sign language late and struggle to achieve high levels of fluency (Woolfe, Herman, Roy, & Woll, 2010). As a consequence, many signing deaf children frequently experience significant language delays (Woolfe et al., 2010). ...
Oral deaf children and hearing children with dyslexia both experience literacy challenges, although their reasons differ. The authors explored the problems underlying poor literacy in each group and drew implications for reading interventions. Data were collected using standardized literacy and phonological measures from 69 severe‐to‐profoundly prelingually deaf children ages 10 and 11 years, all communicating with spoken language, and compared with equivalent data from 20 hearing children with a history of dyslexia matched on reading ability. Children were given a large battery of tasks assessing word and nonword reading, spelling, vocabulary, and reading‐related skills, including letter sound knowledge, phonological awareness, rapid automated naming, and verbal short‐term memory. Striking similarities were observed for word reading, nonword reading, and spelling across groups, and associations between the measures and reading‐related skills were similar. However, differences between the two groups emerged in the strength of association between literacy and vocabulary. Regression analyses confirmed vocabulary as a key predictor of literacy in the oral deaf group. These results suggest that not only children with a history of dyslexia but also oral deaf children who struggle with reading should receive specialist literacy support. Reading interventions for oral deaf children should target phonological and language skills within a fully integrated approach.
... A firm language foundation has been shown repeatedly to be the best longitudinal predictor of reading skills whether a child has a CI or not [57][58][59]. Studies have concluded that deaf children with good signing skills ultimately do better at language skills, reading, writing, and other academic areas, and understand and produce the ambient spoken language better than those who do not use a sign language [43,52,56,[60][61][62][63][64][65][66][67][68][69][70], whether their parents are hearing or deaf [71], although socio-demographic factors do play a secondary role in academic success [72]. An overview of studies over the past two decades makes clear that general language skillsthe skills one gets from daily language interactions, those sorts of interactions common to signing deaf children but uncommon to many strictly speech-only deaf childrenare foundational for reading in a multitude of ways [73]. ...
... A positive message for parents to attend to is that deaf children who learn a sign language early, including those who have a CI, are less likely to experience language delays or linguistic deprivation [38,86]. They are able to learn a spoken language (or the text of one) better because they can base spoken language acquisition on a strong firstlanguage foundation in a sign language [41,43,52,56,[60][61][62][63][64][65][66][67][68][69][70]85]. They benefit from bilingualism cognitively, psycho-socially, and professionally [86,[171][172][173][174][175]. ...
To assist medical and hearing-science professionals in supporting parents of deaf children, we have identified common questions that parents may have and provide evidence-based answers. In doing so, a compassionate and positive narrative about deafness and deaf children is offered, one that relies on recent research evidence regarding the critical nature of early exposure to a fully accessible visual language, which in the United States is American Sign Language (ASL). This evidence includes the role of sign language in language acquisition, cognitive development, and literacy. In order for parents to provide a nurturing and anxiety-free environment for early childhood development, signing at home is important even if their child also has the additional nurturing and care of a signing community. It is not just the early years of a child's life that matter for language acquisition; it's the early months, the early weeks, even the early days. Deaf children cannot wait for accessible language input. The whole family must learn simultaneously as the deaf child learns. Even moderate fluency on the part of the family benefits the child enormously. And learning the sign language together can be one of the strongest bonding experiences that the family and deaf child have.
... Respecto a la BSL, Woolfe et al. (2010) observan una gran heterogeneidad tanto en el momento en que comienza el desarrollo, como en el ritmo de adquisición pero, en líneas generales, constatan un proceso de incremento del léxico signado similar al que se encuentra en los niños y niñas oyentes respecto a la lengua oral, incluyendo las aceleraciones en la adquisición del vocabulario, que se dan de forma similar en los niños sordos que adquieren la lengua de signos británica y los niños oyentes que adquieren el inglés oral. A juicio de Woolfe et al. (2010), la discrepancia en la aceleración de adquisición del vocabulario que se da entre la lengua de signos americana y la lengua de signos británica puede ser debida a la diferencia en los intervalos de edad establecidos para la recogida de datos en cada una de las investigaciones(de seis meses en el ASL y de 4 meses en el BSL). ...
... Debido a la dificultad de encontrar muestras amplias de niños signantes nativos con edades comprendidas entre los 8 y los 36 meses se optó por recoger varias observaciones del desarrollo comunicativo de los niños, siguiendo un procedimiento similar al aplicado por Anderson y Reilly (2002) en su adaptación del CDI a la ASL y por Woolfe et al. (2010) en su adaptación a la BSL. De esta manera, cada niño ha sido evaluado cada cuatro meses hasta cumplir la edad de 36 meses. ...
Describimos la elaboración de un prototipo de cuentacuentos, creado como recurso para favorecer la convivencia de tres códigos de la lengua española (oral, signado, escrito) sobre los parámetros de la educación inclusiva. Desde la realidad de la Lengua de Signos Española y el desarrollo de habilidades comunicativas sobre la lengua y la literatura españolas, en la cuentística encontramos una forma de expresión literaria que bien podemos adaptar al aprendizaje de un segundo código, -oral/ signado/ escrito-, puente hacia la lectoescritura y fuente de estrategias con base en la literacidad: Presenta acciones insólitas, extrañas y perturbadoras, provoca fuertes emociones, capta la atención de los alumnos que se involucra en el proceso de aprendizaje, agudiza la comprensión discursiva, estimula la producción y percepción comunicativa, -recreada sobre recursos TICs-. Describimos los pasos alcanzados en nuestra propuesta para la creación de recurso didáctico en android, y proponemos opciones de mejora.
... Respecto a la BSL, Woolfe et al. (2010) observan una gran heterogeneidad tanto en el momento en que comienza el desarrollo, como en el ritmo de adquisición pero, en líneas generales, constatan un proceso de incremento del léxico signado similar al que se encuentra en los niños y niñas oyentes respecto a la lengua oral, incluyendo las aceleraciones en la adquisición del vocabulario, que se dan de forma similar en los niños sordos que adquieren la lengua de signos británica y los niños oyentes que adquieren el inglés oral. A juicio de Woolfe et al. (2010), la discrepancia en la aceleración de adquisición del vocabulario que se da entre la lengua de signos americana y la lengua de signos británica puede ser debida a la diferencia en los intervalos de edad establecidos para la recogida de datos en cada una de las investigaciones(de seis meses en el ASL y de 4 meses en el BSL). ...
... Debido a la dificultad de encontrar muestras amplias de niños signantes nativos con edades comprendidas entre los 8 y los 36 meses se optó por recoger varias observaciones del desarrollo comunicativo de los niños, siguiendo un procedimiento similar al aplicado por Anderson y Reilly (2002) en su adaptación del CDI a la ASL y por Woolfe et al. (2010) en su adaptación a la BSL. De esta manera, cada niño ha sido evaluado cada cuatro meses hasta cumplir la edad de 36 meses. ...
Ante la ausencia de instrumentos para evaluar el desarrollo temprano de la lengua de signos española (LSE), decidimos adaptar el Inventario de Desarrollo Comunicativo MacArthur-Bates. Partimos de un primer listado elaborado a partir de las adaptaciones previas de este inventario a las lenguas de signos americana (Anderson y Reylly, 2002) y británica (Wolfe et al., 2010) y de la adaptación a la lengua oral española (López-Ornat et al., 2005),validado por un equipo de cuatro personas sordas signantes nativas, especialistas en LSE con experiencia en educación infantil (Pérez et al., 2013). El inventario, que abarcaba la etapa de 8 a 36 meses, estaba formado por un total de 532 signos divididos en 20 categorías, a los que se añadieron 21 frases de comprensión temprana. En la recogida de datos un familiar cercano registró si el niño comprendía o signaba cada signo. Tras realizar un estudio piloto con una muestra de 12 niños signantes, el inventario se revisóquedando finalmente compuesto por 27 frases de comprensión tempranay 569 signos. Estaversión revisadase aplicó posteriormente a una muestra de 37 niños signantes (10sordos y 27oyentes). La presente comunicación recoge la producción y comprensión signada de estos niños, evaluada cada cuatro meses, de manera que contamos con el registro evolutivo longitudinal de 6 niños y, por otra parte, el análisis transversal de los datos de 9 niños de 8 a 11 meses, 5 niños de 12 a 15 meses, 10 niños de 16 a 19 meses, 4 de 20 a 23 meses, 12 niños de 24 a 27 meses, 6 niños de 28 a 31 meses y5 niños de 32 a 36 meses.La recogida de datos prosigue en la actualidad hasta la conclusión del proyecto de validación de la escala en 2016.
... Aunque las adaptaciones o traducciones de cuestionarios a lenguas de signos nacionales o locales son relativamente nuevas (Haug, 2015), son cada vez más frecuentes en los últimos años gracias a las tecnologías digitales, presentando coeficientes de fiabilidad y validez similares a los de sus versiones originales en las lenguas escritas. Por ejemplo, en lengua de signos americana (Anderson y Reilly, 2002), lengua de signos brasileña (Padovani y Teixeira, 2004), lengua de signos británica (Woolfe et al., 2010), lengua de signos española (Rodríguez-Ortiz et al., 2020) y lengua de signos israelí (Novogrodsky y Meir, 2020) del Inventario de Desarrollo Comunicativo MacArthur; Chaveiro et al. (2013) en lengua de signos brasileña para los instrumentos WHOQOL-BREF y WHOQOL-DIS, Huenerfauth et al. (2017) en lengua de signos americana para la System Usability Scale (SUS), Bulun et al., (2022) en lengua de signos turca para la Turkish Health Literacy Scale-32, Garberoglio et al. (2022) en lengua de signos americana para el Self-Determination Inventory: Student Report (SDI:SR), entre otros. ...
Las tecnologías de la información y comunicación empiezan a permitir que los cuestionarios y pruebas de investigación puedan diseñarse sobre soportes digitales que facilitan su adaptación y accesibilidad para personas con discapacidad. En particular, estas tecnologías permiten utilizar vídeos en lengua de signos, lo cual es especialmente importante en personas sordas para las que su primera lengua es una lengua de signos y en las que la realización de pruebas escritas podría comprometer la integridad de las respuestas, si las personas encuestadas no entienden bien las preguntas en una segunda lengua (Napier et al. 2018, Gutierrez-Sigut et al., 2022). Aquí presentamos el trabajo de desarrollo web, utilizando herramientas no estándar, y el proceso de adaptación de cuestionarios a signos internacionales y lengua de signos española en el marco de una investigación cuyo objetivo principal es examinar la relación entre el éxito de las personas sordas y con discapacidad auditiva y su calidad de vida, resiliencia e inteligencia emocional, para lo que se recogen datos sociodemográficos y de pruebas validadas en varios idiomas (Short-Form Health Survey de 12 ítems, Escala de Resiliencia de Connor-Davidson de 10 ítems y Trait-Meta Mood Scale de 24 ítems). Dado que la investigación tiene un alcance internacional, todos los cuestionarios se presentan en seis idiomas escritos (español, inglés, francés, alemán, italiano y portugués de Brasil), signos internacionales y lengua de signos española, para ser autoadministrados por personas sordas en soporte web. Tras la evaluación favorable del Comité de Ética en Investigación Social de la Universidad de Castilla-La Mancha, se evaluó la idoneidad de la web y cuestionarios con un pretest de 12 ítems en 16 personas sordas de 11 países. En este trabajo se discuten los resultados del pre-test y se ofrecen conclusiones.
... Researchers have highlighted the importance of DHH children with difficulties learning sign language receiving equitable access to evidence based interventions from trained staff Quinto-Pozos et al., 2011), comparable to those that underpin spoken language development in hearing children (Law et al., 2010). Although there have been developments in sign language assessments (e.g., Herman et al., 2004Herman et al., , 1999Marshall et al., 2014;Woolfe et al., 2010), research on sign language interventions is as yet in its early stages. A few authors have begun to indicate what such interventions may entail, such as interventions focusing on bilingual shared book reading (Andrews et al., 2017;Wolsey et al., 2018) or training children in handshape rhyme awareness (Holcomb & Wolbers, 2020) to enhance language and literacy skills. ...
Deaf professionals, whom we term Deaf Language Specialists (DLS), are frequently employed to work with children and young people who have difficulties learning sign language, but there are few accounts of this work in the literature. Through questionnaires and focus groups, 23 DLSs described their work in this area. Deductive thematic analysis was used to identify how this compared to the work of professionals (typically Speech and Language Therapists/Pathologists, SLPs) working with hearing children with difficulties learning spoken language. Inductive thematic analysis resulted in the identification of two additional themes: while many practices by DLSs are similar to those of SLPs working with hearing children, a lack of training, information, and resources hampers their work; additionally, the cultural context of language and deafness makes this a complex and demanding area of work. These findings add to the limited literature on providing language interventions in the signed modality with clinical implications for meeting the needs of deaf and hard-of-hearing children who do not achieve expectations of learning a first language in their early years. The use of these initial results in two further study phases to co-deliver interventions and co-produce training for DLSs is briefly described.
... We used 80 concrete common nouns (see Supplementary Material), selected to be known to young children. As no lexical developmental scale for the acquisition of DGS exists, we checked the nouns with the CDI-ASL (Anderson and Reilly, 2002) and CDI-BSL (Woolfe et al., 2010). While targets consisted of complete written words, primes consisted of onsets of signs/spoken words. ...
Signed and written languages are intimately related in proficient signing readers. Here, we tested whether deaf native signing beginning readers are able to make rapid use of ongoing sign language to facilitate recognition of written words. Deaf native signing children (mean 10 years, 7 months) received prime target pairs with sign word onsets as primes and written words as targets. In a control group of hearing children (matched in their reading abilities to the deaf children, mean 8 years, 8 months), spoken word onsets were instead used as primes. Targets (written German words) either were completions of the German signs or of the spoken word onsets. Task of the participants was to decide whether the target word was a possible German word. Sign onsets facilitated processing of written targets in deaf children similarly to spoken word onsets facilitating processing of written targets in hearing children. In both groups, priming elicited similar effects in the simultaneously recorded event related potentials (ERPs), starting as early as 200 ms after the onset of the written target. These results suggest that beginning readers can use ongoing lexical processing in their native language – be it signed or spoken – to facilitate written word recognition. We conclude that intimate interactions between sign and written language might in turn facilitate reading acquisition in deaf beginning readers.
... Language (Woolfe et al., 2010), and Turkish Sign Language (Sumer et al., 2017). ...
In light of the proliferation of tablets (and apps) in young children’s lives, the overarching theme of this thesis is to examine ways in which the unique affordances of such devices can contribute to young children’s early language development. More specifically, this thesis takes a detailed look at young children’s word learning from tablets and the potential use of tablets as a means to assess early word knowledge. From the word learning viewpoint, the first three studies, including a pilot study, examined 2- to 3-year-olds’ word learning from a tablet app through two learning modes: active selection versus passive reception. Results from Study 1A suggest a passive advantage in terms of recognition accuracy among 30- and 40-month-olds but no such advantage was found among 24-month-olds. That is, giving children active control over their learning experiences did not appear to benefit children across the three age groups, but passive watching led to better performance among older children. While Study 1B replicated these results with a new group of 30-month-olds from a different cultural and linguistic background, no differences were found across both active and passive conditions using a more implicit looking time measure, suggesting that children learnt equally across both conditions, but there may be performance costs associated with active selection in tasks designed as in these studies. From the word knowledge assessment viewpoint, Study 2 explored the viability of tablets in assessing early word comprehension among 1-year-olds by means of a two-alternative forced choice word recognition task. Preliminary results indicated that children as young as 18 months can engage meaningfully with a tablet-based assessment, with minimal verbal instruction and child–administrator interaction. The encouraging results further suggest that such assessments have scope for deriving a direct measure of early word comprehension that can supplement parent reports, such as the MacArthur–Bates Communicative Development Inventories (CDI), thereby addressing concerns relating to the exclusive use of parent reports and allowing a more complete picture of children’s early language development. In order to facilitate the assessment of early word knowledge, Study 3 sought to develop a language-general approach that produces adaptive short-form versions of CDIs with test items that are maximally informative and derives estimates of full CDI scores based on prior CDI data from language-, sex-, and age-matched children. Results from real-data simulations revealed that the approach was able to efficiently estimate full CDI scores with tests featuring fewer than 25 items—regardless of language, sex, and age—achieving correlations above .95 with full CDI administrations, with high levels of reliability. Through the combination of web technology and tablets, this thesis also showcases the potential and value of web- and tablet-based methods for collecting data in early developmental research. To make web methods more accessible to researchers, this thesis additionally contributes a new authoring tool, e-Babylab, that allows users to create, host, run, and manage browser-based experiments—without the need for prior technical knowledge. Implications of the results and research limitations, along with possible avenues for future research are discussed.
... Thompson et al. (2012) analyzed the acquisition of BSL vocabulary in 8-to 36-month-old deaf children with deaf, signing parents. The authors used parent report data from the BSL version of the MacArthur-Bates Communicative Development Inventory (CDI) (Woolfe et al. 2010). Their analysis revealed an effect of iconicity on which signs were produced and comprehended. ...
Natural sign languages of deaf communities are acquired on the same time scale as that of spoken languages if children have access to fluent signers providing input from birth. Infants are sensitive to linguistic information provided visually, and early milestones show many parallels. The modality may affect various areas of language acquisition; such effects include the form of signs (sign phonology), the potential advantage presented by visual iconicity, and the use of spatial locations to represent referents, locations, and movement events. Unfortunately, the vast majority of deaf children do not receive accessible linguistic input in infancy, and these children experience language deprivation. Negative effects on language are observed when first-language acquisition is delayed. For those who eventually begin to learn a sign language, earlier input is associated with better language and academic outcomes. Further research is especially needed with a broader diversity of participants.
Expected final online publication date for the Annual Review of Linguistics, Volume 7 is January 14, 2021. Please see http://www.annualreviews.org/page/journal/pubdates for revised estimates.
... She was always enthusiastic about the latest research findings and the picture that was slowly emerging of the way that deaf mothers interacted with their infants and how this impacted on the early stages of sign language development. Bencie also became interested in the development of a standardised measure of early British Sign Language (BSL) vocabulary and she realised this objective as one of the authors of the first BSL adaptation of the Communicative Development Inventories (CDI) (Woolfe, Herman, Roy, & Woll, 2010). ...
... Researchers typically find parents to be reliable and valid indicators of the vocabulary of their typically developing child (Fenson et al., 2007;Fenson et al., 1993), as well as when their child is deaf or hard of hearing (Mayne, Yoshinaga-Itano, Sedey, & Carey, 1998), uses American Sign Language (Anderson & Reilly, 2002) or British Sign Language (Herman, Woolfe, Roy, & Woll, 2010), has cochlear implants (Thal, DesJardin, & Eisenberg, 2007), or is diagnosed with Down syndrome (Galeote, Checa, Sánchez-Palacios, Sebastián, & Soto, 2016) or autism spectrum disorder (Luyster, Lopez, & Lord, 2007). ...
The MacArthur–Bates Communicative Development Inventories (CDIs) are among the most widely used evaluation tools for early language development. CDIs are filled in by the parents or caregivers of young children by indicating which of a prespecified list of words and/or sentences their child understands and/or produces. Despite the success of these instruments, their administration is time-consuming and can be of limited use in clinical settings, multilingual environments, or when parents possess low literacy skills. We present a new method through which an estimation of the full-CDI score can be obtained, by combining parental responses on a limited set of words sampled randomly from the full CDI with vocabulary information extracted from the WordBank database, sampled from age-, gender-, and language-matched participants. Real-data simulations using versions of the CDI-WS for American English, German, and Norwegian as examples revealed the high validity and reliability of the instrument, even for tests having just 25 words, effectively cutting administration time to a couple of minutes. Empirical validations with new German-speaking participants confirmed the robustness of the test.
... In addition to producing high-quality video clips, it has become easier to share the video content. At the turn of the 21st century, when it was not as easy to film, compress, and upload videos online as it is now, researchers had to host designated webpages and find the funds to develop bespoke sites that could host video and text content (Woolfe, Herman, Roy, & Woll, 2010). In recent years, however, sites such as YouTube and Vimeowhere, for example, video upload capacities increased from 20-second clips in 2007 to 20-minute clips in 2014 (the end year of the project) -have made sharing this content easier. ...
For many deaf signers, a signed language is their first or preferred language; spoken or written languages are often second languages and literacy levels among deaf signers vary. Historically, surveys carried out with deaf signers have been in written form, which means that findings of such studies may be problematic in terms of whether participants are a representative sample (as only those with higher levels of literacy may respond) and in terms of the integrity of the responses (if respondents did not fully understand questions). This paper therefore discusses issues faced in conducting survey research with deaf signers, given that they may face challenges in accessing questionnaires in written form. The paper also discusses how to conduct a multi-country study with deaf signers when they do not have a common sign language by designing a questionnaire using International Sign. We present a case study of the Insign project, which employed an online survey methodology that allowed 84 deaf respondents from 22 different countries to view questions in International Sign about their experiences with existing communication technologies and their expectations of service provision to access European Institutions. We explore the advantages and disadvantages of such an approach in relation to the use of International Sign, challenges in recruiting enough respondents, the time needed to create a signed questionnaire instrument, and how to enable deaf participants to respond in sign language. We conclude with recommendations for social science researchers to consider when administering surveys with deaf signing communities.
... (For discussion of the presumed sign advantage in early vocabulary development see Meier, 2016;Rinaldi, Caselli, Di Renzo, Gulli, & Volterra, 2014.) Word comprehension precedes word production and is significantly higher than production when the methodology includes longitudinal indirect measures (i.e., questionnaires for parents: Anderson & Reilly, 2002;Woolfe, Herman, Roy, & Woll, 2010) or direct naming tasks to children (i.e., the Picture Naming Task to deaf signing toddlers: Rinaldi et al., 2014). Lexical repertoire in both comprehension and production is similar for signing deaf children and hearing speaking children, suggesting that the acquisition of semantic contents is driven by more general cognitive and communicative processes and follows similar paths. ...
The aim of this study is to analyze Italian Sign Language (LIS) linguistic skills in two groups of deaf signing children at different ages, and to compare their skills with those of a group of deaf signing adults. For this purpose, we developed a new Sentence Reproduction Task (SRT) for Italian Sign Language (LIS-SRT), which we administered to 33 participants. Participants' scores and type of errors were analyzed to investigate similarities and differences related to both chronological age and age of LIS acquisition. Results showed that signs tended to be omitted more frequently by the younger children than both the older children and adults and that non-manual components produced simultaneously with manual components appear to be the most difficult linguistic elements to be acquired and mastered. Our results are compared to those of previous studies using SRTs for other signed languages.
... Anderson & Reilly, 2002; for BSL: Woolfe, Herman, Roy, & Woll, 2010). However, very little research exists on the learning of a sign language by adults (e.g., Woll, 2013). ...
With the alignment of Swiss German Sign Language (Deutschschweizerische Gebärdensprache, DSGS) curricula in tertiary education to the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages (CEFR), the need for reliable and valid assessment instruments for adult learners arose.
With the focus on beginning adult learners of DSGS and on the notion of vocabulary knowledge contributing to overall language proficiency, two vocabulary size tests for DSGS have been developed and evaluated. The dissertation at hand reports on this work. The first test is a web-delivered self-report, the second test represents a translation test from German to DSGS, which includes video-recording for later analysis. For both tests, the same set of items is used. The items have been sampled from existing DSGS teaching materials.
For the main study, 20 DSGS adult learners of ages 24 to 55 (M = 39.3) were recruited as test takers. An item analysis of the test results yielded candidates for removal from the item set. An analysis of internal consistency (Cronbach’s Alpha) showed good results for both tests (>.90). Similarly, inter-rater reliability (Cohen’s Kappa) of the translation test indicated promising results. Evidence contributing to content and face validity was collected based on the sampling method of the test items and feedback from the test takers, respectively. Due to the lack of a second DSGS vocabulary test that could be used to establish concurrent validity, external variables (self-assessment of DSGS skills, number of DSGS courses attended, DSGS learning contexts) were identified and investigated as possible external criteria contributing to the performance of the test takers. Only one variable, number of DSGS courses attended, showed a statistically significant correlation with the test results.
The results of this study confirm findings from studies of spoken language assessment and will contribute to future research in sign language testing and assessment.
... Data were elicited from a version of the MacArthur Bates Communicative Developmental Inventory (CDI) adapted for TID. In this version, three source tests were taken into consideration to account for modality and cultural specific issues: ASL CDI (Anderson & Reilly, 2002), BSL CDI (Woolfe, Herman, Roy, & Woll, 2009) and Turkish CDI (TIGE, Aksu-Koç, Küntay, Acarlar, Maviş, Sofu, Topbaş, & Turan, 2009). As a result, TID CDI consists of 500 items grouped into 18 categories such as "animals", "toys" and "actions". ...
Motivated form-meaning mappings are pervasive in sign languages, and iconicity has recently been shown to facilitate sign learning from early on. This study investigated the role of iconicity for language acquisition in Turkish Sign Language (TID). Participants were 43 signing children (aged 10 to 45 months) of deaf parents. Sign production ability was recorded using the adapted version of MacArthur Bates Communicative Developmental Inventory (CDI) consisting of 500 items for TID. Iconicity and familiarity ratings for a subset of 104 signs were available. Our results revealed that the iconicity of a sign was positively correlated with the percentage of children producing a sign and that iconicity significantly predicted the percentage of children producing a sign, independent of familiarity or phonological complexity. Our results are consistent with previous findings on sign language acquisition and provide further support for the facilitating effect of iconic form-meaning mappings in sign learning.
... Using an adapted vocabulary test (i.e., CDI for American Sign Language), they found a significant increase in these children's vocabulary size over a span of 12 months. As for grammatical assessment in LSE, these researchers used an adapted test from the British Sign Language Receptive Skills Test and found a significant increase in their receptive signing skills (Woolfe et al. 2010). They ascribed the results to the ample opportunity for sign language input in the sign bilingual and co-enrollment environment, which they failed to obtain at home as most hearing parents were hearing and had very little experience in sign language before. ...
In recent decades, empirical evidence from sign linguistics research has confirmed the natural language properties of sign languages used by Deaf members of the society. One consequence is to reintroduce sign language into the classroom for the deaf, to rectify the ban on sign language and Deaf teachers during the Milan Congress in 1880. Such a move led to the establishment of sign bilingualism in educating deaf and hard-of-hearing (DHH) students in deaf school settings. However, development of this approach constantly faces the challenge of oralism (i.e., the use of oral language with residual hearing only) supported by advanced assistive hearing devices until today, regardless of educational settings. This chapter addresses the combined effects of adopting sign bilingualism and co-enrollment in regular school settings where DHH and hearing students are supported by the collaborative teaching of a hearing teacher and a Deaf teacher in a bimodal bilingual fashion.
... -La adaptación de los inventarios CDI-MacArthur-Bates (Fenson et al. 1993(Fenson et al. , 1994) a la lengua de signos. Hasta el momento han sido adaptados a la Lengua de Signos Americana-ASL- (Anderson y Reilly, 2002), y a la Lengua de Signos Británica-BSL- (Woolfe, Herman, Roy y Woll, 2010) ambas dirigidas a niños signantes de edades comprendidas entre los 8 y los 36 meses. Partiendo de estas adaptaciones, de los datos evolutivos disponibles para la LSE, y de la experiencia educativa con niños de educación infantil de un grupo de especialistas de LSE se procedió a elaborar un Inventario de Vocabulario Temprano de la LSE i . ...
... Using an adapted vocabulary test (i.e., CDI for American Sign Language), they found a significant increase in these children's vocabulary size over a span of 12 months. As for grammatical assessment in LSE, these researchers used an adapted test from the British Sign Language Receptive Skills Test and found a significant increase in their receptive signing skills (Woolfe et al. 2010). They ascribed the results to the ample opportunity for sign language input in the sign bilingual and co-enrollment environment, which they failed to obtain at home as most hearing parents were hearing and had very little experience in sign language before. ...
In recent decades, empirical evidence from sign linguistics research has confirmed the natural language properties of sign languages used by Deaf members of the society. One consequence is to reintroduce sign language into the classroom for the deaf, to rectify the ban on sign language and Deaf teachers during the Milan Congress in 1880. Such a move led to the establishment of sign bilingualism in educating deaf and hard-of-hearing (DHH) students in deaf school settings. However, development of this approach constantly faces the challenge of oralism (i.e., the use of oral language with residual hearing only) supported by advanced assistive hearing devices until today, regardless of educational settings. This chapter addresses the combined effects of adopting sign bilingualism and co-enrollment in regular school settings where DHH and hearing students are supported by the collaborative teaching of a hearing teacher and a Deaf teacher in a bimodal bilingual fashion.
... Using an adapted vocabulary test (i.e., CDI for American Sign Language), they found a significant increase in these children's vocabulary size over a span of 12 months. As for grammatical assessment in LSE, these researchers used an adapted test from the British Sign Language Receptive Skills Test and found a significant increase in their receptive signing skills (Woolfe et al. 2010). They ascribed the results to the ample opportunity for sign language input in the sign bilingual and co-enrollment environment, which they failed to obtain at home as most hearing parents were hearing and had very little experience in sign language before. ...
In recent decades, empirical evidence from sign linguistics research has confirmed the natural language properties of sign languages used by Deaf members of the society. One consequence is to reintroduce sign language into the classroom for the deaf, to rectify the ban on sign language and Deaf teachers during the Milan Congress in 1880. Such a move led to the establishment of sign bilingualism in educating deaf and hard-of-hearing (DHH) students in deaf school settings. However, development of this approach constantly faces the challenge of oralism (i.e., the use of oral language with residual hearing only) supported by advanced assistive hearing devices until today, regardless of educational settings. This chapter addresses the combined effects of adopting sign bilingualism and co-enrollment in regular school settings where DHH and hearing students are supported by the collaborative teaching of a hearing teacher and a Deaf teacher in a bimodal bilingual fashion.
... Information about the children's productive vocabularyseparately in signs and in spoken words -was collected by using the Finnish adaptation (Lyytinen, 1999) Woolfe, Herman, Roy & Woll, 2010). Additionally, a supplementary part was added to the Toddler version to collect data on the grammar of FinSL. ...
In this study we followed the characteristics and use of code-mixing by eight KODAs – hearing children of Deaf parents – from the age of 12 to 36 months. The children's interaction was video-recorded twice a year during three different play sessions: with their Deaf parent, with the Deaf parent and a hearing adult, and with the hearing adult alone. Additionally, data were collected on the children's overall language development in both sign language and spoken language. Our results showed that the children preferred to produce code-blends – simultaneous production of semantically congruent signs and words – in a way that was in accordance with the morphosyntactic structure of both languages being acquired. A Deaf parent as the interlocutor increased the number of and affected the type of code-blended utterances. These findings suggest that code-mixing in young bimodal bilingual KODA children can be highly systematic and synchronised in nature and can indicate pragmatic development.
... For example, the MacArthur-Bates Communicative Development Inventories(MB-CDI, Fenson et al., 2007), an internationally and widely used test that has proven to be a reliable and valid tool to assess children's early spoken language development, has been adapted to measure development in some sign languages (e.g. American Sign Language byAnderson & Reilly, 2002, and British Sign Language byWoolfe, Herman, Roy & Woll, 2010). ...
Research on deaf children’s language development has a long and complex history. Work is motivated by seemingly incompatible models of what deafness means. On the one hand, the dominant medical model documents hearing loss and spoken language deficits. Research contributes to continuing improvements in spoken language outcomes following neo-natal screening and early cochlear implants. On the other hand, the smaller number of researchers looking at deafness and language development in the social model have championed the diversity of deaf children, their rights to learn signed languages and be educated in bilingual schools. This paper covers a selection of research studies on deafness and language development coming from both the medical and social models.The main objective of the paper is to offer some remarks concerning a set of standpoints taken by researchers which require more careful discussion in order to further thefield. It concludes with a suggestion for how the two diverging models could convergemore. The proposal is to focus attention on the factors which lead to high quality earlycommunicative interactions rather than access to words or signs.
Bilingual bimodalism is a great benefit to deaf children at home and in schooling. Deaf signing children perform better overall than non-signing deaf children, regardless of whether they use a cochlear implant. Raising a deaf child in a speech-only environment can carry cognitive and psycho-social risks that may have lifelong adverse effects. For children born deaf, or who become deaf in early childhood, we recommend comprehensible multimodal language exposure and engagement in joint activity with parents and friends to assure age-appropriate first-language acquisition. Accessible visual language input should begin as close to birth as possible. Hearing parents will need timely and extensive support; thus, we propose that, upon the birth of a deaf child and through the preschool years, among other things, the family needs an adult deaf presence in the home for several hours every day to be a linguistic model, to guide the family in taking sign language lessons, to show the family how to make spoken language accessible to their deaf child, and to be an encouraging liaison to deaf communities. While such a support program will be complicated and challenging to implement, it is far less costly than the harm of linguistic deprivation.
Language development is often hampered by the fact that 90 per cent of deaf children are born into hearing families who do not know Sign language (SL) or haven't had any previous contact with the deaf world. Such parents often use only spoken language to communicate with the child, which results in no or very little language exposure. Many deaf children only start to learn a language, signed or spoken, when they start attending school, usually between the ages of three and seven. As a result, the deaf child has a delay in cognitive and language development and finds it hard to learn a SL, like South African Sign Language (SASL), as well as a written language (e.g., English). This late exposure to SL proves to be a serious cognitive problem for deaf children when compared to those children who acquired language from birth. This problem led to the research question namely, whether deaf children’s language and cognition can still develop to the required level for school readiness if early language intervention (ELI) takes place within the critical period of language acquisition. To answer the question, a case study was done at a school for the deaf and blind with a small group of deaf learners in the foundation phase. The results show that the little language exposure these children received in only one year of school already made a huge difference to their language and cognitive development. This article also makes recommendations to the various stakeholders in deaf education.
This chapter provides introductory information to situate this book in three interlocking disciplines that frame the discussions of sign language brokering throughout the book: social sciences (deaf studies), language studies (applied linguistics and sociolinguistics) and translation studies (interpreting studies). First, I give an overview of the sociolinguistic and sociocultural position of deaf communities, sign languages and sign language multilingualism, heritage signers and identity and bimodal bilingualism. The sociolinguistic and sociocultural identities of deaf and hearing people who grow up in deaf communities foreground the focus of this book on sign language brokering. I then give an explanation for my use of the term ‘heritage signers’ to identify the sample of hearing and deaf participants in my research. Moving on, I discuss the concept of intercultural mediation that accounts for a range of different interactions, and different communication processes, between people that use different languages and come from different cultures, and that language brokering is a form of intercultural mediation performed by children and young people for their parents. This establishment of the concept of language brokering provides the backdrop to discussing the reality of sign language brokering, and why this study is needed. After providing a statement of the problem, I then provide details of my position in signing communities and the motivations for me to do this research and write this book. Finally, a breakdown of the structure of the book is given.
Objective
To examine whether deaf or hard of hearing children who have hearing parents can develop age-level vocabulary skills when they have early exposure to a sign language.
Study design
This cross-sectional study of vocabulary size included 78 deaf or hard of hearing children between 8- and 68-months-old who were learning American Sign Language (ASL) and had hearing parents. Children who were exposed to ASL before 6- months-old or between 6- and 36-months-old were compared with a reference sample of 104 deaf and hard of hearing children who have deaf, signing parents.
Results
Deaf and hard of hearing children with hearing parents who were exposed to ASL in the first six months of life had age-expected receptive and expressive vocabulary growth. Children who had a short delay in ASL exposure had relatively smaller expressive but not receptive vocabulary sizes, and made rapid gains.
Conclusions
Though hearing parents generally learn ASL alongside their deaf children, their children can develop age-expected vocabulary skills when exposed to ASL during infancy. deaf children with hearing parents can predictably and consistently develop age-level vocabularies at rates similar to native signers; early vocabulary skills are robust predictors of development across domains.
This study investigates children’s vocabulary knowledge in Finnish Sign Language (FinSL), specifically their understanding of different form-meaning mappings by using a multilayered assessment format originally developed for British Sign Language (BSL). The web-based BSL vocabulary test by Mann (2009) was adapted for FinSL following the steps outlined by Mann, Roy and Morgan (2016) and piloted with a small group of deaf and hearing native signers (N = 24). Findings showed a hierarchy of difficulty between the tasks, which is concordant with results reported previously for BSL and American Sign Language (ASL). Additionally, the reported psychometric properties of the FinSL vocabulary test strengthen previous claims made for BSL and ASL that the underlying construct is appropriate for use with signed languages. Results also add new insights into the adaptation process of tests from one signed language to another and show this process to be a reliable and valid way to develop assessment tools in lesser-researched signed languages such as FinSL.
Today, as the result of shifts of paradigm, a transition to an inclusive model of understanding disability is under way, as a necessary consequence of a change in attitudes towards social and educational science approaches. This transformation has induced further similar changes in both public policies and special educational practices for people with disabilities. In this vision, the right of persons with disabilities to be equal to and different from others should be recognized; the right to equal opportunities must be based on the right to the equality of different identities. This book presents an overview of sociological views and public policies concerning the identity related aspects of social and educational inclusion of people with disabilities, focusing especially on the European Union and Romania. A special attention is devoted to a particular kind of disability – deafness – which presents important peculiarities pointing to the special role of Deaf culture and identity as key factors of inclusion. The book includes five empirical case studies conducted by the authors in the North-Western border area of Romania (the so called Partium region).
Disszertációmban az etnikai-nemzeti kisebbségben élő Bihar megyei (romániai) magyar siket személyek helyzetét mikro- és makrotársadalmi perspektívából vizsgálom. Kutatási stratégiám alapját az életút – kutatás módszere képezi, amely lehetővé teszi, hogy az egyén életútját a maga folyamat jellegében, a döntési helyzeteket eredményező fordulópontokra koncentrálva, az identitás alakulására ható főbb életszakaszok – származási családi szocializáció, formális tanulási áletszakasz, saját családalapítás, családi élet és gyermeknevelés, valamint a siket közösségen belüli és kívüli közösségi élet sajátosságai - szerint tagolva vizsgáljuk. Kutatásom során statisztikai adatgyűjtést végeztem a Bihar megyei siketekre (a nagyváradi székhelyű Siketek Egyesületének tagjaira) vonatkozó nyilvántartások, személyes dossziék alapján. A Bihar megyei siket közösség magyar tagjai és román házastársaik körében megvalósított kérdőíves felmérés, valamint a tipológiai szempontok alapján kiválasztott személyekkel készített életút-interjúk segítségével gyűjtöttem identitásuk alakulását befolyásoló tényezőkre vonatkozó tényanyagot. Az interjúk során nyert információk összekapcsolásával két vagy három nemzedék életútját nyomon követő családi esettanulmányok készültek. Közösségi inklúzió, nyelvhasználat és identitás kapcsolatának mélyrehatóbb feltárása érdekében résztvevő megfigyelést végeztem a nagyváradi siket-közösségekben.
A Romániai Siketek Egyesülete nagyváradi szervezetének lélekszáma közel félezer. Mégis, körükben a halló társadalomban megszokottnál sokkal több és szélesebb az egymásról való ismeret, szorosabb és tartósabb az egymással való kapcsolattartás, s ugyanakkor a közösség másik tagját érintő információ tekintetében valóságos ismeretháló szövődik egymás életéről, egészen az iskolaévekig visszamenőleg. Összetartó, barátságos nagycsoport ez. Bármelyikük el tud mondani legalább tíz jellemzőt a nagy létszámú közösséghez tartozó bármely másik személyről. Sorsuk hasonlósága, a közös nyelv, kultúra, az egyedi, a csak rájuk jellemző jelképek, a közösen megélt sajátos élmények, rendezvények, hasonló vagy ugyanolyan oktatási gyökerek járulnak hozzá az erős kohézió kialakulásához.
Educational need assessment is the most important step in planning,
particularly in curriculum development. Therefore, the purpose of the
present study was answering to two questions a) What was the educational needs and its priorities in views of deaf students in technical high schools in Isfahan, Iran? b) Were there any differences between views of male and female students toward educational needs? In the present descriptive study, sixty male and female deaf students were randomly selected in two technical high schools in Isfahan. The participants completed a research-made educational need assessment questionnaire. The findings revealed that most students reported which communicational and motivational
needs were needed. Also, there were significant differences between four categories of motivational needs, communicational needs, vocational needs and kinesthetic needs. The results showed that all participants reported their needs in all items, whereas female students reported more needs in motivational and kinesthetic needs than male students.
Deaf sign language users oftentimes claim to be able to recognise straight away whether their interlocutors are native signers. To date it is unclear, however, what exactly such judgement calls might be based on. The aim of the research presented was to explore whether specific articulatory features are being associated with signers that have (allegedly) acquired German Sign Language ( Deutsche Gebärdensprache , DGS) as their first language. The study is based on the analysis of qualitative and quantitative data. Qualitative data were generated in ten focus group settings. Each group was made up of three participants and one facilitator. Deaf participants’ meta-linguistic claims concerning linguistic features of ‘native signing’ (i. e. what native signing looks like) were qualitatively analysed using grounded theory methods. Quantitative data were generated via a language assessment experiment designed around stimulus material extracted from DGS corpus data. Participants were asked to judge whether or not individual clips extracted from a DGS corpus had been produced by a native signer. Against the backdrop of the findings identified in the focus group data, the stimulus material was subsequently linguistically analysed in order to identify specific linguistic features that might account for some clips to be judged as ‘produced by a native signer’ as opposed to others that were claimed to have been ‘articulated by a non-native signer’. Through juxtaposing meta-linguistic perspectives, the results of a language perception experiment and the linguistic analysis of the stimulus material, the study brings to the fore specific crystallisation points of linguistic and social features indexing linguistic authenticity. The findings break new ground in that they suggest that the face as articulator in general, and micro-prosodic features expressed in the movement of eyes, eyebrows and mouth in particular, play a significant role in the perception of others as (non-)native signers.
The article treats on complexity of speech development, communication process of
child with damaged hearing. Article emphasizes factors defining different language
and communication competences. Hearing impairment leads to self-expression
being delayed. Mentioned delays, could be quantitative (active and passive vocabulary,
subordinate to the chronological age of the child) and qualitative (numerous,
different disorders of articulation, semantic errors, problems with understanding
simple commands).
Stefanini, Bello, Caselli, Iverson, & Volterra (2009) reported that Italian 24-36 month old children use a high proportion of representational gestures to accompany their spoken responses when labelling pictures. The two studies reported here used the same naming task with (1) typically developing 24-46-month-old hearing children acquiring English and (2) 24-63-month-old deaf children of deaf and hearing parents acquiring British Sign Language (BSL) and spoken English. In Study 1 children scored within the range of correct spoken responses previously reported, but produced very few representational gestures. However, when they did gesture, they expressed the same action meanings as reported in previous research. The action bias was also observed in deaf children of hearing parents in Study 2, who labelled pictures with signs, spoken words and gestures. The deaf group with deaf parents used BSL almost exclusively with few additional gestures. The function of representational gestures in spoken and signed vocabulary development is considered in relation to differences between native and non-native sign language acquisition.
This chapter highlights that researchers interested in assessments need separate, specifically designed tests of language and cognition for deaf sign language users rather than relying on tests designed for users of spoken languages. Tests that are developed specifically for deaf signers and that produce deaf norms are an invaluable tool in both sign language research and clinical practice. When deaf signers are given spoken language-based tests designed to be suitable for hearing populations, there is a potential for linguistic and cultural biases to occur, which can lead to an unreliable assessment. The chapter reviews the language and cognitive assessments that have been developed for deaf children and adults to date, demonstrating examples of good practice. It presents a range of important points to consider when conducting assessments with deaf signers. The chapter concludes with considerations for developing future assessments.
This paper aims to present an adaptation of the Brief Neuropsychological Assessment Battery NEUPSILIN for patients with expressive aphasia (NEUPSILIN-Af). This battery includes a brief assessment of components of the functions Time and Spatial Orientation, Attention, Perception, Memory (Working Memory, Episodic-Semantic, Long-Term Semantic, Prospective and Visual), Arithmetic Abilities, Language (Oral and Written), Praxias (Ideomotor, Constructional and Reflexive) and Executive Functions (Simple Problem Solving and Verbal Fluency). The adaptation was necessary due to primarily linguistic deficits of expressive aphasic patients, who have dificulties in the production of verbal answers. The adaptation process involved six steps: 1) literature review, 2) analysis of the original instrument and construction of NEUPSILIN-Af preliminary adapted version, 3) analysis of expert judges in the health area; 4) analysis of expert judges in the neuropsychology area, 5) pilot study, and 6) the final version. These procedures allowed to test the content validity of the NEUPSILIN-Af. Future steps in this study include testing the sensitivity of this battery for detecting cognitive impairment in patients with expressive aphasia. © Cien. Cogn. 2011; Vol. 16 (3): 078-094.
Previous research found that iconicity—the motivated correspondence between word form and meaning—contributes to expressive vocabulary acquisition. We present two new experiments with two different databases and with novel analyses to give a detailed quantification of how iconicity contributes to vocabulary acquisition across development, including both receptive understanding and production. The results demonstrate that iconicity is more prevalent early in acquisition and diminishes with increasing age and with increasing vocabulary. In the first experiment, we found that the influence of iconicity on children's production vocabulary decreased gradually with increasing age. These effects were independent of the observed influence of concreteness, difficulty of articu-lation, and parental input frequency. Importantly, we substantiated the independence of iconicity, concreteness, and systematicity—a statistical regularity between sounds and meanings. In the second experiment, we found that the average iconicity of both a child's receptive vocabulary and expressive vocabulary diminished dramatically with increases in vocabulary size. These results indicate that iconic words tend to be learned early in the acquisition of both receptive vocabulary and expressive vocabulary. We recommend that iconicity be included as one of the many different influences on a child's early vocabulary acquisition.
The study of sign language acquisition has revealed important insights regarding the acquisition of language in the visual modality, the impact of delayed first-language exposure on language ability, and the relationship between language and cognitive processes. Unique challenges arise in studying sign language acquisition due to the low incidence and heterogeneity of the population and the need for inclusion in all aspects of the research of highly skilled native and near-native language users who are deaf. Despite these challenges, a range of methodological approaches have been applied to sign language acquisition, including longitudinal and cross-sectional sampling of the population, case studies, adaptation of assessment instruments, standardized measures, analyses of naturalistic language, and elicited language samples. Through these methods, researchers are able to conduct rigorous studies whose findings have made invaluable contributions to theories of language acquisition and development in a number of sign languages and populations.
There is debate about how input variation influences child language. Most deaf children are exposed to a sign language from their non-fluent hearing parents and experience a delay in exposure to accessible language. A small number of children receive language input from their deaf parents who are fluent signers. Thus it is possible to document the impact of quality of input on early sign acquisition. The current study explores the outcomes of differential input in two groups of children aged two to five years: deaf children of hearing parents (DCHP) and deaf children of deaf parents (DCDP). Analysis of child sign language revealed DCDP had a more developed vocabulary and more phonological handshape types compared with DCHP. In naturalistic conversations deaf parents used more sign tokens and more phonological types than hearing parents. Results are discussed in terms of the effects of early input on subsequent language abilities.
This article investigates the basis for the frequently reported statement that ten percent of deaf persons are born to families with one or more deaf parents. The prevalence of deaf children born to deaf parents (deaf-of-deaf) is important because it is often cited when describing linguistic and educational advantages, along with social and cultural differences, associated with deaf children born to deaf parents compared to deaf children of hearing parents. This analysis provides a current estimate for the distribution of parental hearing status among deaf and hard of hearing students in United States using data from the Annual Survey of Deaf and Hard of Hearing Children and Youth (19992000). This is the first national estimate that fully utilizes the distinction between children having deaf parents and hard of hearing parents, as well as hearing parents. The authors propose that the key demographic to report, other than that the overwhelming majority of deaf and hard of hearing students have hearing parents, is whether the child has one or two deaf parents. The annual survey findings indicate that less than five percent of deaf and hard of hearing students receiving special education are known to have at least one deaf parent, which is less than half of the presumed ten percent. Reasons for the difference between the present and previous estimates are suggested.
This study compared the language skills in a group of very low-income toddlers with those of a middle-income sample matched on age and sex. The assessment instrument was the MacArthur Communicative Development Inventory (CDI) for toddlers, a parent report form. The scores for the low-income group were strikingly lower on the three key indices evaluated: size of expressive vocabulary, age of appearance of word combinations, and complexity of utterances. The entire lowincome distribution was shifted about 30% toward the lower end of the middle-income distribution for both productive vocabulary and grammatical development. The magnitude of these income/ social class effects was larger than reported in most prior reports for children in this age range. This finding underscores the cautionary note issued by the CDI developers, which states that the published CDI norms, based on a middle-class sample, may not be directly applicable to low-income samples.
Following the development and standardization of the British Sign Language (BSL) Receptive Skills Test (Herman et al., 1999), the test was made widely available to professionals working with deaf children. Test users were asked to return completed score-sheets on individual children they had tested in order to compare a selection of children from the wider population of deaf children with those from the sample upon whom the test was standardized. The analysis of almost 200 score sheets is presented. Overall, children from the wider population achieved lower standard scores than those from the standardization sample, with the exception of native signers, whose scores were equivalent to the native signers' scores in the original sample. The findings raise important questions about the adequacy of BSL provision for deaf children in hearing families. Data on tester ratings and children's reading scores provide an opportunity for a preliminary investigation of the psychometric properties of the test. Finally, tester feedback on the test itself, the training offered and the overall contribution of the test to assessing deaf children's BSL development are reviewed. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Feldman et al. criticize the MacArthur Communicative Development Inventories (CDIs) as having too much variability, too little stability, and insufficient ability to predict early language delay. We present data showing that these characteristics of the CDI are authentic reflections of individual differences in early language development rather than measurement deficiencies. We also respond to their critical assertions concerning sociodemographic influences on the CDI scores.
Communicative Development Inventories (CDIs) were collected from 669 British children aged between 1;0 and 2;1. Comprehension and production scores in each age group are calculated. This provides norming data for the British infant population. The influence of socioeconomic group on vocabulary scores is considered and shown not to have a significant effect. The data from British infants is compared to data from American infants (Fenson, Dale, Reznick, Bates, Thal & Pethick, 1994). It is found that British infants have lower scores on both comprehension and production than American infants of the same age.
Cultural, linguistic, and developmental evidence was taken into consideration in constructing the HCDI, a Hebrew adaptation of the MCDI. The HCDI was then administered to a stratified sample of Israeli mothers of 253 toddlers aged 1;6 to 2;0 (M = 1;8.18). Hebrew results are presented and compared with scores from the original MCDI sample (Fenson, Dale, Reznick, Bates, Thal & Pethick, 1994). The HCDI is a reliable and sensitive measure of lexical development and emergent grammar, capturing wide variability among Israeli toddlers. In comparison with English, the relation between vocabulary size and age, as well as the shape of the growth curves for nouns, predicate terms, and closed class words relative to size of lexicon, were strikingly similar. These results indicate that conclusions concerning cross-linguistic similarities can be best documented by using parallel methods of measurement. The HCDI results support the claim that early lexical development in Hebrew and in English follow remarkably similar development patterns, despite the typological differences between the two target languages.
This study assessed the long-term predictive validity of the MacArthur Communicative Development Inventories: Words and Sentences (CDI:WS; Fenson, Dale, Reznick, Thal, Bates, Hartung, Pethick & Reilly, 1993) for children's expressive and receptive vocabulary development. Sixty-one New Zealand children (31 females) were assessed with a New Zealand version of the CDI: WS at 1;7 and 2;1 and with the Expressive Vocabulary Test (Williams, 1997) and the Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test-III (Dunn & Dunn, 1997) at 2;8 and 3;4. Excellent reliability and good predictive validity was obtained for the NZ CDI:WS even over a 21-month delay. Predictive validity of the NZ CDI:WS for the PPVT-III was higher for children of mothers with less education. We discuss the implications of these results for use of the CDI:WS with children from a broad range of cultural and educational backgrounds.
Parent-based assessments of vocabulary, grammar, nonverbal ability, and use of language to refer to post and future (displaced reference) were obtained for 8,386 twin children at 2 years of age. Children with 2 year vocabulary scores below the 10th centile were designated the early language delay (ELD) group, and their outcomes at 3 and 4 years were contrasted with the remainder of the sample, the typical language (TL) group. At 3 and 4 years old, children were designated as language impaired if their scores fell below the 15th centile on at least 2 of the 3 parent-provided language measures: vocabulary, grammar, and use of abstract language. At 3 years, 44.1% of the ELD group (as compared to 7.2% of the TL group) met criteria for persistent language difficulties, decreasing slightly to 40.2% at 4 years (as compared to 8.5% of the TL group), consistent with previous reports of frequent spontaneous resolution of delayed language in preschoolers. Although relations between language and nonverbal abilities at 2 years and outcome at 3 and 4 years within the ELD group were highly statistically significant, effect sizes were small, and classification of outcome on the basis of data on 2-year-olds was far too inaccurate to be clinically useful. Children whose language difficulties persisted were not necessarily those with the most severe initial difficulties. Furthermore, measures of parental education and the child's history of ear infections failed to substantially improve the prediction.
The present study investigated the validity of the MacArthur-Bates Communicative Development Inventory (CDI) for a group of toddlers 30 months of age. Study 1 examined the concurrent validity of the CDI for a group of 38 late talkers. Significant correlations were found between the CDI and direct measures of language abilities. Study 2 used likelihood ratio analysis to determine how well the CDI sorted 100 toddlers (38 late talkers and 62 children with a history of normal language development) according to language status based on direct assessment measures. The analyses showed that the CDI was effective in identifying children with low language skills up to the 11th percentile and in identifying children with normal language skills above the 49th percentile.
Given the current lack of appropriate assessment tools for measuring deaf children's sign language skills, many test developers
have used existing tests of other sign languages as templates to measure the sign language used by deaf people in their country.
This article discusses factors that may influence the adaptation of assessment tests from one natural sign language to another.
Two tests which have been adapted for several other sign languages are focused upon: the Test for American Sign Language and
the British Sign Language Receptive Skills Test. A brief description is given of each test as well as insights from ongoing
adaptations of these tests for other sign languages. The problems reported in these adaptations were found to be grounded
in linguistic and cultural differences, which need to be considered for future test adaptations. Other reported shortcomings
of test adaptation are related to the question of how well psychometric measures transfer from one instrument to another.
This article responds to evidence gaps regarding language impairment identified by the US Preventive Services Task Force in 2006. We examine the contributions of putative child, family, and environmental risk factors to language outcomes at 24 months of age.
A community-ascertained sample of 1720 infants who were recruited at 8 months of age were followed at ages 12 and 24 months in a prospective, longitudinal study in metropolitan Melbourne, Australia. Outcomes at 24 months were parent-reported infant communication (Communication and Symbolic Behavior Scales and MacArthur-Bates Communicative Development Inventories vocabulary production score). Putative risk factors were gender, preterm birth, birth weight, multiple birth, birth order, socioeconomic status, maternal mental health, maternal vocabulary and education, maternal age at birth of child, non-English-speaking background, and family history of speech-language difficulties. Linear regression models were fitted to total standardized Communication and Symbolic Behavior Scales and Communicative Development Inventories vocabulary production scores; a logistic regression model was fitted to late-talking status at 24 months.
The regression models accounted for 4.3% and 7.0% of the variation in the 24-month Communication and Symbolic Behavior Scales and Communicative Development Inventories scores, respectively. Male gender and family history were strongly associated with poorer outcomes on both instruments. Lower Communication and Symbolic Behavior Scales scores were also associated with lower maternal vocabulary and older maternal age. Lower vocabulary production scores were associated with birth order and non-English-speaking background. When the 12-month Communication and Symbolic Behavior Scales Total score was added as a covariate in the linear regression of 24-month Communication and Symbolic Behavior Scales Total score, it was by far the strongest predictor.
These early risk factors explained no more than 7% of the variation in language at 24 months. They seem unlikely to be helpful in screening for early language delay.
Deaf 1 children acquire sign language the same way hearing children acquire spoken language. The stages through which Deaf and hearing children go are the same and occur at approximately the same time; and also the errors they make are comparable. Infants make use of manual "babbling" prior to producing their first words using reduplicated "syllables" and making use of the handshapes and locations which are most frequent in the respective sign language. This is comparable to how hearing children babble, substituting, for example, plosives for fricatives. The first words appear earlier in sign language than in spoken language, namely at about 8.5 months compared to between ten and 13 months for hearing/speaking children. Contrary to belief the majority of early signs are not particularly iconic. The main reason for this can be seen in the advantage of manual or gestural language as opposed to the disadvantages of vocal language. In sign language first words may be recognized and also corrected much earlier than in spoken language due to the overtness of the articulators. A first sign for "bottle" or "pacifier" is counted as a first word for Deaf but not hearing children. Child-directed talk, often referred to as motherese, is used in sign language as well and is not speech specific. Emotional facial expressions are produced consistently and universally by children by one year of age. From early on Deaf children are able to distinguish between communicative and linguistic gestures but are faced with a challenge when acquiring these visual-spatial aspects, the spatial memory demands of co-reference, and the visual attention demands of sign language when engaged in early conversations. The modality qua visual itself seems to plays a minor role in the process of acquiring language.
Throughout history there have been efforts to help deaf children develop spoken language through which they could have full access to the hearing world. These efforts, although pursued seriously and with great care, frequently proved fruitless and often resulted only in passionate arguments over the efficacy of particular approaches. Although some deaf children did develop spoken language, there was little evidence to suggest that this development had been facilitated by any particular educational approach, and moreover, many, even most deaf children - especially those with profound loss - never develop spoken language at all. Recent technological advances, however, have led to more positive expectations for deaf children's acquisitions of spoken language: innovative testing procedures for hearing allow for early identification of loss which leads to intervention services during the first weeks and months of life. Programmable hearing aids allow more children to make use of residual hearing abilities. Children with the most profound losses are able to reap greater benefits from cochlear-implant technologies. At the same time, there have been great advances in research into the processes of deaf children's language development and the outcomes they experience. As a result, we are for the first time accruing a sufficient base of evidence and information to allow reliable predictions about children's progress which will, in turn, lead to further advances. This book presents information on the new world evolving for deaf and hard-of-hearing children and the improved expectations for their acquisition of spoken language. © 2006 by Patricia Elizabeth Spencer and Marc Marschark. All rights reserved.
Cross-linguistic research shows that sign language acquisition follows developmental milestones similar to those of spoken language. Beginning with manual babble, babies learn to look at sign language and segment the visual signal into lexical and phonological units that they later learn to combine into syntactic structures, discourse, and narration. Children acquiring sign languages must learn to differentiate emotional from linguistic facial expression and to use three-dimensional space for linguistic contrasts. Motor development plays an important role in the acquisition of phonology but any iconic quality of signs does not.
This chapter focuses on the continued developments and refinements that occur in the production of deaf school-age children's narratives in British Sign Language (BSL). Although the data and psycholinguistic models discussed are based on narratives produced in BSL, it is intended that this work can be applied to other signed languages. The chapter explores the issues surrounding deaf children's mastery of the extended uses of signed language narrative (e.g. those needed for academic discourse). It is argued that these developments revolve around the bilingual relationship between literacy in signed and spoken language. School-based activities involving comparative narrative analysis are outlined at the end of the chapter. © 2006 by Brenda Schick, Marc Marschark, and Patricia Elizabeth Spencer. All rights reserved.
A questionnaire was distributed to education services in the UK where British Sign Language (BSL) is used. Questions were asked about communication policies, current assessment methods and perceived assessment needs. The results of the survey suggest that a comprehensive range of aspects of children's signing are recognised as requiring assessment, but that there is a general lack of agreement on which aspects are routinely assessed and how this should be done. The need for a more standard assessment protocol to be developed is discussed. This survey was carried out in the early stages of a project to develop and standardise an assessment of BSL, based at City University, London.
The 2nd edition of this book is rewritten to conform to the British Psychological Society's Certificates of Competence in Occupational Testing. The book is divided into two parts. The first deals with the theoretical and more general issues of psychometrics. The second part is a step-by-step guide on construction of psychometrics questionnaires. The book is intended to provide both a theoretical underpinning to psychometrics and a practical guide. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
This article examines D. Gentner's (1982) claim that nouns are universally predominant in children's early vocabularies. When a conservative method of counting nouns was used, 9 out of 10 22-month-old monolingual Mandarin-speaking children produced more verbs or action words than nouns or object labels in their naturalistic speech. When a more liberal definition of nouns was used, neither a noun nor a verb bias was found. Importantly, there was no difference in the type-token ratios of the children's use of nouns and verbs. Thus, a sampling bias type of explanation cannot explain the prevalence of verbs in these data. Instead, these data suggest the importance of a variety of linguistic and sociocultural input factors in early word learning. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
This paper examines individual differences in the rate of early lexical development with a specific interest in gender differences. Twenty-six children were assessed monthly from either 8, 9, or 10 months of age through 14 months of age, using the MacArthur Communicative Development Inventory: Words and Gestures. Individual differences in developmental trajectories of vocabulary comprehension and production were explored using two analytic approaches. The first involved traditional parametric statistics, while the latter utilized classification procedures. Both techniques demonstrated that the lexical development of girls outpaced that of boys. The inductive approach also revealed the presence of distinctive "fast" and "slow" trajectories for both comprehension and production that were not exclusively segregated by gender. Cases exhibiting fast trajectories were predominantly girls, but several boys also followed this developmental pattern. The opposite pattern emerged for the slow trajectories. There was strong correspondence between production and comprehension, but a few cases clustered into the fast development group on one measure and the slow group on the other. The identification of these outliers may offer an important tool for exploring mechanisms of language development. Validation of the clustering results was based on the prospective prediction of an external criterion variable, namely, lexical development at 21 months, and by replication on an independent sample.
The Communicative Development Inventories (CDIs) are parent report measures of vocabulary and other aspects of language development in very young children. They have evolved over the past 20 years to be one of the most well recognised assessments of infant language. Of particular significance is the fact that the CDIs are the first measures of their kind to be widely translated and adapted for use in many different languages. The inventories have served a variety of functions including measuring early language acquisition, deriving normative data on language acquisition, and both identifying and describing children whose early language is significantly delayed. This review describes the development of the CDIs, summarises the volume of research that has been generated in a range of applications of the measures, and evaluates their current standing both as a research tool and as a clinical measure. Issues around the sensitivity and predictive value of the CDIs are also considered.
Listening Progress Profile (LIP) is a profile devised to monitor changes in the early auditory performance of young implanted children. The profile covers a range of abilities from first response to environmental sounds, through discrimination of environmental sounds and discrimination of voice, to identification of own names. This study, prospective and longitudinal, involved 68 prelingually deaf children (congenitally deaf or deafened before the age of three years and implanted before the age of five years). Prior to implantation the median score of LIP was zero. By the 3-month interval it had increased to 20; at the 6-month interval to 32; at the 12-month interval to 40; and at the 24-month interval it reached the maximum score available (42). The increase in scores at each interval following implantation was statistically significant. In conclusion, LIP was found to be a sensitive tool with which to measure the progress of auditory skills in young implanted children. The profile may help the implant programme and local professionals working with young implanted children, as well as parents, to obtain a measure of progress of auditory performance in the early stages following implantation, where other, more formal, measures may be inappropriate. Copyright © 2000 Whurr Publishers Ltd.
The transition from slow to rapid word-learning was examined in a longitudinal study of 18 children. Beginning at age 1;2, mothers kept a diary of children's words. Diary entries were discussed during phone calls to the home every 2½ weeks. A chronological record of nouns and other word classes was coded from the diary records.
Thirteen children evidenced a prolonged period of up to three months during which rate of acquisition markedly increased. Almost threequarters of the words learned during this period were nouns. Five children evidenced more gradual word-learning, and acquired a balance of nouns and other word classes. These results suggest that the terms ‘vocabulary spurt’ and ‘naming explosion’ best describe children who focus their early linguistic efforts on a single strategy: learning names for things. Other children may attempt to encode a broad range of experience with a more varied lexicon, a strategy that results in more gradual lexical growth.
Data from parent reports on 1,803 children--derived from a normative study of the MacArthur Communicative Development Inventories (CDIs)--are used to describe the typical course and the extent of variability in major features of communicative development between 8 and 30 months of age. The two instruments, one designed for 8-16-month-old infants, the other for 16-30-month-old toddlers, are both reliable and valid, confirming the value of parent reports that are based on contemporary behavior and a recognition format. Growth trends are described for children scoring at the 10th-, 25th-, 50th-, 75th-, and 90th-percentile levels on receptive and expressive vocabulary, actions and gestures, and a number of aspects of morphology and syntax. Extensive variability exists in the rate of lexical, gestural, and grammatical development. The wide variability across children in the time of onset and course of acquisition of these skills challenges the meaningfulness of the concept of the modal child. At the same time, moderate to high intercorrelations are found among the different skills both concurrently and predictively (across a 6-month period). Sex differences consistently favor females; however, these are very small, typically accounting for 1%-2% of the variance. The effects of SES and birth order are even smaller within this age range. The inventories offer objective criteria for defining typicality and exceptionality, and their cost effectiveness facilitates the aggregation of large data sets needed to address many issues of contemporary theoretical interest. The present data also offer unusually detailed information on the course of development of individual lexical, gestural, and grammatical items and features. Adaptations of the CDIs to other languages have opened new possibilities for cross-linguistic explorations of sequence, rate, and variability of communicative development.
As the age of cochlear implantation in children decreases, there is an increasing need for methods to monitor the preverbal and early linguistic development of children fitted with these devices. One method that has been used successfully to monitor children wearing acoustic amplifying hearing aids entails the video recording over time of child-adult interactions in a conversational setting, and the subsequent methodical analysis of various aspects of the interaction. These aspects include eye contact, turn taking, autonomy, and auditory processing. The same method has been applied to children wearing the Nucleus 22-electrode cochlear implant system. An overview is given of the video analysis results for a group of 10 children studied from a period before implantation up to one year postimplantation. The results illustrate group changes in the various measures due to the provision of auditory information by the cochlear implant, plus the scatter of individual data. It is concluded that early indications of progress over time generally predict the level of functioning achieved at 12 months postimplantation. The method provides essential objective information, which enables discrete changes in behavior to be monitored realistically. Two case studies are presented to illustrate the application of the video analysis method to obtain information for clinical management of children with cochlear implants.
This study investigated the validity of a parent report measure of vocabulary development, the MacArthur Communicative Development Inventory: Words and Sentences (CDI), in children with and without developmental disabilities. Concurrent validity was examined by comparing results from the CDI and laboratory measures of vocabulary in 44 children with Down syndrome and 46 typically developing children with mental ages from 12 to 27 months. Significant correlations between .70 and .82 were obtained. Predictive validity was examined by measuring the vocabulary of 20 children with Down syndrome and 23 typically developing children first at approximately 20 months mental age and later at a mental age of approximately 28 months. Significant correlations were obtained between the CDI at Time A and all but one of the vocabulary measures at Time B (r = .46 to .66). These results establish the validity of parent measures of vocabulary development for children with Down syndrome and confirm their validity for typically developing children.
This epidemiologic study estimated the prevalence of specific language impairment (SLI) in monolingual English-speaking kindergarten children. From a stratified cluster sample in rural, urban, and suburban areas in the upper midwest, 7,218 children were screened. The language screening failure rate was 26.2%. Children who failed the screening and a similar number of controls were then administered a diagnostic battery ( n =2,084) that provided for a diagnosis of SLI using common diagnostic standards. Results provided an estimated overall prevalence rate of 7.4%. The prevalence estimate for boys was 8% and for girls 6%. Variation in prevalence was found among children of different racial/cultural backgrounds; however, these background variables were found to be correlated with parental education, which was also associated with SLI. The parents of 29% of the children identified as SLI reported they had previously been informed that their child had a speech or language problem.
The prevalence estimates obtained fell within recent estimates for SLI, but demonstrated that this condition is more prevalent among females than has been previously reported. Also, the clinical identification of these children remains low among kindergarteners.
Previous research has documented the validity of parent report for measuring vocabulary and grammar in typically developing toddlers. In this project, two studies examined the validity of parent report for measuring language in children with specific language delay who are older than the normative group, but who have language levels within the range measured by the instruments. In Study 1, scores on the MacArthur Communicative Development Inventory: Words and Sentences were compared to behavioral measures of production of vocabulary and grammar in 39- to 49-month-old children with language delay. Results indicated moderately high to high concurrent validity correlations in both domains (.67-.86). In Study 2, scores on the MacArthur Communicative Inventory: Words and Gestures were compared to behavioral measures of vocabulary comprehension and production and gesture production in 24- to 32-month-old children with language delay. Results indicated a moderately high concurrent validity correlation for vocabulary production (.66). Parent report of comprehension and gesture scores did not correlate significantly with their behavioral counterparts, but gesture scores were moderately highly correlated with language comprehension (.65).
Feldman et al. criticize the MacArthur Communicative Development Inventories (CDIs) as having too much variability, too little stability, and insufficient ability to predict early language delay. We present data showing that these characteristics of the CDI are authentic reflections of individual differences in early language development rather than measurement deficiencies. We also respond to their critical assertions concerning sociodemographic influences on the CDI scores.
In a prospective study of child development in relation to early-life otitis media, we administered the MacArthur Communicative Development Inventories (CDI) to a large (N = 2,156), sociodemographically diverse sample of 1- and 2-year-old children. As a prerequisite for interpreting the CDI scores, we studied selected measurement properties of the inventories. Scores on the CDI/Words and Gestures (CDI-WG), designed for children 8 to 16 months old, and on the CDI/Words and Sentences (CDI-WS), designed for children 16 to 30 months old, increased significantly with months of age. On several scales of both CDI-WG and CDI-WS, standard deviations approximated or exceeded mean values, reflecting wide variability in results. Statistically significant differences in mean scores were found according to race, maternal education, and health insurance status as an indirect measure of income, but the directionality of differences was not consistent across inventories or across scales of the CDI-WS. Correlations between CDI-WG and CDI-WS ranged from .18 to .39. Our findings suggest that the CDI reflects the progress of language development within the age range 10 to 27 months. However, researchers and clinicians should exercise caution in using results of the CDI to identify individual children at risk for language deficits, to compare groups of children with different sociodemographic profiles, or to evaluate the effects of interventions.
An instrument designed to assess young children's communicative skills at 18 months is described. The instrument consists of a 103-item parental report checklist based on the Swedish version of the Communicative Development Inventories (SECDI). We present descriptive data from a study at the Swedish Community Health Care Centres, including parental reports of 1021 18-month-old children. The response rate was 88%. Performance at the 10th percentile consisted of 8 communicative gestures, 45 comprehended words, and 7 spoken words. The overall results indicate that the instrument is reliable and has validity approximating that of the SECDI. Furthermore, parents of the children with the poorest vocabulary indicated approval of the assessment procedure in interviews especially directed to this group.
To This is a 1 test per thousand learn more about normal language development in deaf children, we have developed the MacArthur Communicative Development Inventory for American Sign Language (ASL-CDI), a parent report that measures early sign production. The ASL-CDI is an inventory of sign glosses organized into semantic categories targeted to assess sign language skills in children ages 8 to 36 months. The ASL-CDI uses a recognition format in which parents check off signs that their child produces. The form has demonstrated excellent reliability and validity. To date, normative data have been collected from 69 deaf children with deaf parents who are learning sign language as a first language. We discuss the development of the ASl-CDI and preliminary cross-sectional and longitudinal findings from this early data collection with particular focus on parallels with spoken language acquisition. We also discuss the acquisition of first signs, negation, wh-questions, and fingerspelling with developmental patterns provided based on age, as well as vocabulary size.
The development of joint attention and symbolic communication in profoundly deaf designedforuse with infants
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