Use of baby signs in children acquiring sign language

Sat Mar 13 02:43:27 UTC 2010

Hello, Laura (and others following this thread), here's another perspective.
Focusing on the type of input parents make available to infants, ASL is, as
you say, quite different than referential gestures ("baby signs"). But if
you examine what the infants themselves produce, for the first several
months the similarities are more striking than the differences. In a 2000
book chapter, I compared infant production data from two studies: Folven and
Bonvillian's 1991 study of hearing babies provided with ASL from birth (plus
gestures, presumably, and varying amounts of spoken English) and Goodwin and
Acredolo's 1993 study of hearing babies for whom parents deliberately
enhanced their use of referential gestures to accompany some of their spoken
English words beginning near 11 months of age.

Focusing just on number of forms (ASL signs or referential gestures), there
was a massive difference in what was provided, but no detectable difference
in age at first manual form meeting symbolic criteria (~12 mo). The first
symbolic spoken word appeared at the same age in both groups (~12 mo). With
symbolic criteria not applied, the first ASL sign was ~8 mo and the tenth
form was attained at 13.5 mo for ASL, 14.1 mo for referential gestures, and
13.3 mo for the latter group's spoken words.  By the end of each study, the
number of manual forms was (only) two to three times as high for the ASL
learners (e.g., median of 31 forms at an estimated average age of 17.4 mo)
as for babies with enhanced exposure to referential gestures (e.g., median
of 16.5 at an average age a bit above 20 mo.).

An initial interpretation is that the early forms for both groups are quite
similar not only in their onset but also in their developmental role -- an
enhancement of the usually more limited, naturally occurring symbolic
gestures. For the ASL learners these morph a few months later into a sign
lexicon and for the other babies declines as they acquire a larger lexicon
of spoken words. The main caveat is that the ASL learners should also be
acquiring phonological knowledge throughout and comprehension of ASL syntax
later in this period, setting them apart in these respects from the others.

Fine-grained longitudinal study of the individual manual forms used by ASL
learners and their parents at 8-24 months would be invaluable. I'd venture
that if it turned out that these parents are like those of Acredolo and
Goodwyn's earliest families (who did not deliberately enhance their
gesturing but naturally arrived at an average of 4 or 5 referential gestures
used symbolically by the babies), in addition to ASL they would be seen to
use a few idiosyncratic forms that get picked up by their babies but later
fall away. From the baby's perspective all the forms could be picked up
initially as vehicles for symbolic gesturing, and the ASL signs would also
offer the opportunity to extract aspects of ASL phonology and syntax.

See Abrahamsen, A. (2000). Explorations of enhanced gestural input to
children in the bimodal
period.<http://crl.ucsd.edu/%7Eadele/publications/abrahamsen_enhancedgesture.pdf>In
K. Emmorey and H. Lane (Eds.),
*The signs of language revisited: An anthology to honor Ursula Bellugi and
Edward Klima* (pp. 357-399). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum. (And please note: I
excluded early talkers from G&A's sample and then adjusted the raw data from
each study to make them as comparable as possible. On certain vocabulary
measures there also was comparable data from two of the babies in my own
Toddler Sign Program - similar in important respects to the baby signing
situation but using forms borrowed from ASL rather than invented forms. The
relation between number of forms and age was similar.)

Adele Abrahamsen
Project Scientist
Center for Research in Language
University of California, San Diego
9500 Gilman Drive, 0526
La Jolla, CA 92093-0526

Email:  adele at crl.ucsd.edu

Homepage: crl.ucsd.edu/~adele
Inquiry website:  inquiry.ucsd.edu

On Mon, Mar 8, 2010 at 4:38 AM,
<info-childes+noreply at googlegroups.com<info-childes%2Bnoreply at googlegroups.com>
> wrote:

>   Today's Topic Summary
>
> Group: http://groups.google.com/group/info-childes/topics
>
>    - Use of baby signs in children acquiring sign language<#1273dc8754760e81_group_thread_0>[4 Updates]
>
>   Topic: Use of baby signs in children acquiring sign language<http://groups.google.com/group/info-childes/t/dbcd9cd1909bbaf8>
>
>    Laura Morett <lmorett at ucsc.edu> Mar 07 12:21PM -0800 ^<#1273dc8754760e81_digest_top>
>
>    Dear all,
>    A recent post to another thread reminded me of something I've recently
>    been wondering about. Does anyone know if there is an research on the
>    use of baby signs with children acquiring ASL or another actual sign
>    language? I understand that the two are very different beasts, in
>    that baby signs are considered more akin to gestures than actual sign
>    languages, which have been shown to have all of the characteristics of
>    spoken languages. I also understand that sign language generally
>    emerges more quickly than spoken language, due to children's better
>    motor control over their hands than their larynx, so perhaps there is
>    no need for them to use baby signs at all. But I was just wondering
>    if anyone knows of any research on this at all.
>
>    On a related note, do users of sign languages such as ASL gesture?
>    Would this be impossible, due to their use of both hands for signing?
>
>    Thanks,
>    Laura Morett
>
>
>
>
>    ************************************************************************************************
>    Laura Maribeth Morett
>    Ph.D. Student
>    Cognitive Psychology Area
>    Department of Psychology
>    University of California, Santa Cruz
>
>    Office: Social Sciences 2, Room 419
>    Lab: Bilingualism & Cognition, SS2 411
>    Mailstop: Psychology Faculty Services
>    Phone: (831) 459-4592
>    Fax: (831) 459-5319
>    Personal website: http://people.ucsc.edu/~lmorett<http://people.ucsc.edu/%7Elmorett>
>    Email: lmorett at ucsc.edu
>
>
>
>
>    Roberta Golinkoff <Roberta at udel.edu> Mar 07 03:33PM -0500 ^<#1273dc8754760e81_digest_top>
>
>    See the research by Linda Acredolo at University of CA Davis about
>    baby's
>    use of "baby sign" and its impact on oral language acquisition.
>    Best, Roberta Golinkoff
>
>    > .
>    > For more options, visit this group at
>    > http://groups.google.com/group/info-childes?hl=en.
>
>    --
>    Roberta Michnick Golinkoff, Ph. D.
>    H. Rodney Sharp Professor
>    School of Education and Departments of Psychology and Linguistics and
>    Cognitive Science
>    University of Delaware, Newark, DE 19716
>    Office: 302-831-1634; Fax: 302-831-4110
>    Web page: http://udel.edu/~roberta/ <http://udel.edu/%7Eroberta/>
>    Author of "A Mandate for Playful Learning in Preschool: Presenting the
>    Evidence" (Oxford)
>    http://www.mandateforplayfullearning.com/
>    Please check out our doctoral program at
>    http://www.udel.edu/education/graduate/index.html
>    The late Mary Dunn said, "Life is the time we have to learn."
>
>
>
>
>    <reilly1 at mail.sdsu.edu> Mar 07 01:01PM -0800 ^<#1273dc8754760e81_digest_top>
>
>    Hi Laura,
>    Karen Emmorey has done work on gesture in ASL if you are interested.
>    Cheers
>    Judy
>
>
>
>
>    Peter Gordon <pgordon at tc.columbia.edu> Mar 07 04:09PM -0500 ^<#1273dc8754760e81_digest_top>
>
>    It seems that there is a separate issue about whether young infants can
>    learn to communicate with a simplified sign system (which seems to be
>    the
>    case) and whether that helps (or hinders) normal language learning
>    (which
>    seems to be more controversial). Probably shouldn't throw out the baby
>    signs with the bathwater, just because it doesn't help with regular
>    language
>    if some parents find it useful for understanding an infants needs.
>
>    Peter Gordon
>
>
>
>
>
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