new corpus on hearing impairment

[Brian MacWhinney]

Dear Info-CHILDES,
  I am happy to announce the inclusion in the CHILDES database of a new
corpus comparing language in children with hearing impairment and children
with normal hearing.  The corpus has been contributed by Johanna Nicholas of
the Central Institute for the Deaf in St. Louis (jnicholas at cid.wustl.edu).
Many thanks to Johanna for contributing the first CHILDES corpus of oral
language from children with hearing impairment.  The readme file for the
corpus follows.  The data can be found in nicholas.sit in /clinical

--Brian MacWhinney



            These transcripts were created for study of the verbal and
nonverbal communicative behavior of both typically-developing,
normally-hearing children and those with a severe-profound hearing loss. All
of the children with hearing loss were enrolled in an auditory-oral
educational program and therefore what is transcribed is primarily spoken
English.  

The study is composed of two sections: a cross-sectional study and a
36-month study.  The cross-sectional study examined children at 12, 18, 24,
30, 36, 42, 48, and 54 months. There were 96 normally-hearing participants
located through local birth records and 43 children with hearing loss. In
the 36 month study,  there were 18 normally-hearing participants located
through local birth records and 18 children with hearing loss.  Important
note:  15 of the 18 deaf children did not have a cochlear implant at the
time of this study.  Therefore, the language contained in these transcripts
is representative of children with these characteristics in the days before
cochlear implantation and may be significantly different from otherwise
comparable children who received a cochlear implant at a young age along
with intensive auditory-oral instruction.  Specific audiological information
is available from the researcher donating the transcripts.

These transcripts were created from videotaped play with a parent.  Each
session was approximately 30 minutes in length and time codes are
interspersed throughout. The child-parent dyad were provided with 4
successive sets of toys during the 30 minutes and asked to play naturally,
using whatever toys were of interest to the child.  Parents were encouraged
to use the time to have fun with their child and not to use the session as a
³teaching session².

A few of the children in this study had been exposed to signed English,
either informally or formally before beginning their auditory-oral education
and therefore there are some instances in which informal or formal signs
appear in the transcripts.  These are marked on the transcript and a key to
these is available from the donating researcher.

All transcripts were created by trained graduate students in the field of
speech and hearing and were verified by certified Teachers of the Deaf.  The
sessions were transcribed at the word level (not ³morphemicized²).  They
were later coded for communicative function but those codes are not included
in these files.

 

Ref:  Nicholas, J. G. and Geers, A. E. (1997).  Communication of oral deaf
and normally hearing children at 36 months of age.  Journal of Speech,
Language, and Hearing Research, 40, 1314-1327.

 

Research supported by the NIDCD.