Language development is a given for every child except for language deprived deaf children

Language deprivation or severe delay is rare for a hearing child but there are millions of deaf people who are essentially void of language including my mother’s experience as a child.

How can this happen? A hearing child is surrounded by language-fluent adults at home and in the community who provide language stimulation and serve as language models for young children supporting natural language acquisition.

Research indicates that typical hearing children should have a vocabulary of 2,000 words by age 5 (Biemiller, n.d.). In stark contrast, deaf children often enter school severely language delayed with only a small vocabulary and limited expressive and receptive communication skills. I have taught deaf middle school students who arrived at school with maybe 5 words, not knowing their names and unable to describe where they live. This is devastating for a teen to experience such severe language deprivation.

Why is this happening to deaf children? First, their parents probably have never met a deaf person and so have limited knowledge and/or resources. Second, soon after birth, parents are told that their baby has failed the hearing test. establishing the belief that “deaf” is abnormal. Medical personnel reinforce this negative label and advise that parents need to ‘fix’ their deaf child, promoting spoken language to ‘fit into the society, and warning against using sign language. And third, Deaf children’s best access for language development is acquiring a visual language (signing) rather than trying to learn spoken language through limited or no hearing. Medical and educational professionals may not be aware of that significant reality. Research indicates that limiting deaf children’s access to only spoken language can cause insufficient language input in an inaccessible auditory-only environment whereas American Sign Language (ASL) provides full and complete access in a rich visual language environment (Maryberry, 2007). Developing ASL during the critical period for language acquisition parallels the acquisition of spoken language of hearing children and provides a strong L1 foundation to support the development of a second language (L2).(Humphries, 2012).

This view that deaf children’s current status of limited language is normal needs to change. Professionals in medicine, education, and advocacy fields should give parents different options that support deaf children’s effective acquisition of language. Sign language is a fully accessible visual language. Spoken/written language can be learned as a second language. I encourage you to spread the words that sign language is the most effective option for deaf children’s success in academic and in life.

Photo by D. Johnson, 2014

I am a graduate student in deaf education at Boston University. I also work as a research assistant for Language Acquisition and Visual Attention. After graduation, I want to teach deaf students with severe language delays.

References

Biemiller, A., (n.d.). Handbook of Language and Literacy Development: A Roadmap from 0 to 60 months--The Importance of the Number of Words Known by Age Five for Later School Achievement. Retrieved: http://www.theroadmap.ualberta.ca/vocabularies

Humphries, T., Kushalnagar, P., Mathur, G., Napoli, D., Padden, C., Rathmann, C., & Smith, S. R. (2012). Language acquisition for deaf children: Reducing the harms of zero tolerance to the use of alternative approaches. Harm Reduction Journal, 9(1), 16.

Mayberry, R. I. (2007). When timing is everything: Age of first-language acquisition effects on second-language learning. Applied Psycholinguistics, 28(03).