Help: let them speak or sign their language

Tue Dec 10 15:13:40 UTC 2013

Hi Aliyah,

reading and feeling inspired by Ignazio's message, I would like to join
this exchange somewhat belatedly. I would like to make two points regarding
language development in children with CI and draw a conclusion as to why
sign language may be useful for these children.

1) For some time now we have known that the development of spoken language
in children with CI is characterized by an enormous variability. Individual
children vary to an extent which is not observed in typical development
(although variability is large there, as well). This holds irrespective of
age at implantation. Children implanted before the age of 24 months may -
as a group - have a slight advantage over children implanted thereafter,
but they display the same variability. This also applies to children
implanted in the first year of life.

We do not know enough about the many different factors which influence the
spoken language development of children with CI over time to make reliable
predictions about outcomes at the time of implantation. Typically, only
around 50% of the variance in outcomes is explained.

2) Studies which emphasize the effect of age at implantation claiming a
linear relationship between age at implantation and progress in language
according to "the earlier the better" typically have not controlled for all
the other known factors influencing the children's language development. In
particular, they have not looked at the influence of  the children's
linguistic environment/input. We found in one study that, if one looks at
the relative influence of age at implantation (when this is between 6 and
34 months) and parental language input, the quality of parental language
input explains a far greater proportion of the variance in outcomes than
age at implantation:

Szagun, G. & Stumper, B. (2012). Age or experience? The influence of age at
implantation, social and linguistic environment on language development in
children with cochlear implants. *Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing
Research, 55, *1640-1654*.*

In view of the uncertainty facing parents about their child's spoken
language development, it seems wise to give the child the opportunity to
grow up with signed and spoken language, if parents wish to choose this
path. In my 15 years of research on spoken language development in children
with CI in Germany I have seen too many children who at the age of five
years still had not gone beyond two word utterances (despite early
implantation). I have also seen many who were almost indistinguishable from
children with typical language development at the age of four years. The
point is: we cannot predict. Young children need a symbolic system. There
should - and there does not have to be - a single child with only two word
utterances at five years of age. The modality of this system is not of
concern, but the lack of it is. Children with CI cannot lose out if they
are bilingual/bimodal, but they can lose out severely if the development of
a symbolic system is hampered. This is why, in my view, parents have every
right to enable bilinguality for their children.

Best wishes,
Gisela

On Tue, Dec 10, 2013 at 6:52 AM, Aliyah MORGENSTERN <
aliyah.morgenstern at gmail.com> wrote:

> Thank you Denis!
> Best,
> Aliyah
> Le 10 déc. 2013 à 00:22, Denis Donovan a écrit :
>
> Actually, 3 years may be VERY VERY late. Consider:
>
> Bergelson, Elika & Swingley, Daniel (2013). At 6–9 months, human infants
> know the meanings of many common nouns. Proceedings of the National Academy
> of Science. PNAS Early Edition,
> www.pnas.org/cgi/doi/10.1073/pnas.1113380109 and
> http://www.pnas.org/content/109/9/3253 (120913).
>
> Our findings indicate that native-language learning in the second half of
> the first year goes beyond the acquisition of sound structure. The fact
> that even 6- to 7-mo-olds learn words suggests that conceptual and
> linguistic categories may influence one an- other in development from the
> beginning (36) and that aspects of meaning are available to guide other
> linguistic inferences cur- rently thought to depend only on distributional
> analysis of pho- nological regularities (37, 38). Understanding word
> meaning could also support the acquisition of syntax by guiding infants’
> inferences about how nouns and words from other word classes are placed in
> sentences. Precocious word learning also helps explain why hearing-impaired
> infants identified for fitting with cochlear implants before 6 mo reveal
> better language skills at 2 y than children identified just a few months
> later: 6-mo-olds who can hear are already learning words (39).
>
> Best,
>
> Denis Donovan
>
> Denis M. Donovan, M.D., M.Ed., F.A.P.S.
> Director, EOCT Institute
>
> Medical Director, 1983 - 2006
> The Children's Center for Developmental Psychiatry
> St. Petersburg, Florida
>
> P.O Box 47576
> St. Petersburg, FL 33743-7576
> Phone: 727-641-8905
> DenisDonovan at EOCT-Institute.org
> dmdonovan1937 at gmail.com
>
>
> On Dec 9, 2013, at 3:32 PM, Aliyah MORGENSTERN wrote:
>
> thanks a lot!
> Le 9 déc. 2013 à 13:45, Isa Barriere a écrit :
>
> Salut Aliyah,
>
> Here you are:
>
> deborah.pichler at gallaudet.edu
>
> Isabelle
>
>
> On Sun, Dec 8, 2013 at 10:31 PM, Isa Barriere <barriere.isa at gmail.com>wrote:
>
>> Deb Chen Pichler/Gallaudet presented a co-authored paper at BU this year
>> that speaks to this issue:
>>
>> Spoken language development in native signing children with cochlear
>> implants
>>
>> *K. Davidson, D. Lillo-Martin, D. Chen Pichler*
>>
>>
>> *Their results show that children exposed to ASL from birth do not suffer
>> from lg and cognitive delay observed in children with CI without ASL
>> exposure. *
>>
>> *Isabelle Barriere, PhD*
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> On Sun, Dec 8, 2013 at 7:51 PM, Erika Hoff <erikachoff at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>> Dear all,
>>>
>>> I am replying by repeating what deaf acquaintances of mine have said to
>>> me. To wit, If you are deaf you should learn sign because
>>>
>>> (a) when you take your implant off to swim, shower, etc. you are deaf.
>>> (b) someday you may have an infection or something may happen so that
>>> your cochlear implant will not work or be tolerable, and then you will be
>>> deaf.
>>> (c) cochlear implants have variable outcomes. Simultaneous sign may help
>>> when the auditory signal doesn't quite do it.
>>>
>>> Erika Hoff
>>>
>>>
>>> On Sun, Dec 8, 2013 at 3:28 PM, Roberta Golinkoff <Roberta at udel.edu>wrote:
>>>
>>>> Hi Aliyah!
>>>>
>>>> Sorry to be late in joining the party!
>>>>
>>>> For your first question, here are 3 papers that make the clear case
>>>> that the earlier the implantation for deaf kids the better. If implantation
>>>> is done early, the use of sign may become moot -- children are also offered
>>>> therapy.  However, if implantation is done later, it would seem clear that
>>>> they should be offered sign ASAP.  I have no trouble with the notion of
>>>> bilingual-bimodal as long as kids are flooded with oral input and not told
>>>> to turn off their devices, a practice I have heard of.
>>>>
>>>> For your second questions, there will be an SRCD Social Policy report:
>>>>
>>>> McCabe, A., Tamis-LeMonda, C.S., Bornstein, M. H., Cates, D. B.,
>>>> Golinkoff, R. M., Hirsh-Pasek, K., Hoff, E., Kuchirko, Y., Melzi, G.,
>>>> Mendelsohn, A., Paez, M., Song, L, & Guerra, A. W. (In press). Multilingual
>>>> children: Beyond myths and towards best practices.  *Social Policy
>>>> Report, *Society for Research in Child Development.  It will hopefully
>>>> come out early in 2014.
>>>>
>>>> We addressed four questions:
>>>>
>>>> 1. What are the broad social and historical contexts of multilingual
>>>> learners in the United States?
>>>>
>>>> 2. What does a multilingual family look like?
>>>>
>>>> 3. What lessons learned with monolingual children can be applied to
>>>> multilingual children?
>>>>
>>>> 4. What contexts support learning multiple languages?
>>>> I think this will be very helpful to you Aliyah, when it emerges.
>>>>
>>>> All best and happy holidays to you and all my other language friends!
>>>> Roberta
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> On Tue, Nov 26, 2013 at 9:16 PM, Eileen Graf <
>>>> eileen.graf at googlemail.com> wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> Dear Aliyah,
>>>>>
>>>>>  You might find these helpful:
>>>>>
>>>>> [1] Place, Silvia & Hoff, Erika (2011). Properties of Dual Language
>>>>> Exposure That Influence 2-Year-Olds’ Bilingual Proficiency. Child
>>>>> Development:
>>>>>
>>>>> http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1467-8624.2011.01660.x/abstract
>>>>>
>>>>> *[2] Davidson, Kathryn, Lillo-Martin, Diane & Chen Pichler (in press).
>>>>> Spoken English language measures of native signing children with cochlear
>>>>> implants. Journal of Deaf Studies and Deaf Education
>>>>> <http://jdsde.oxfordjournals.org/content/early/2013/10/16/deafed.ent045.abstract>.*
>>>>> Best,
>>>>> Eileen
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> On 26 November 2013 15:01, Marinova-Todd, Stefka <
>>>>> stefka at audiospeech.ubc.ca> wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>>> Dear Aliyah,
>>>>>>
>>>>>> I am not aware of papers that speak to your first question, i.e.,
>>>>>> sign language, although there are probably some.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Regarding your second question, there are a few, mostly qualitative
>>>>>> studies done on the effect (usually negative) of the recommendation by
>>>>>> professionals to parents of bilingual children with autism to speak only
>>>>>> one language (usually English in the North American context):
>>>>>>
>>>>>> 1) Jegatheesan, B. (2011). Multilingual development in children with
>>>>>> autism: Perspectives of South Asian Muslim immigrant parents on raising a
>>>>>> child with a communicative disorder in multilingual contexts. Bilingual
>>>>>> Research Journal, 34, 185-200.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> 2) Kay‐Raining Bird, E., Lamond, E., & Holden, J. (2012).  Survey of
>>>>>> bilingualism in autism spectrum disorders.  International Journal of
>>>>>> Language & Communication Disorders, 47, 52-64.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> 3) Kremer-Sadlik, T. (2005). To be or not to be bilingual: Autistic
>>>>>> children from multilingual families. In J. Cohen, K. T. McAlister, K.
>>>>>> Rolstad, & J. MacSwan (Eds.), Proceedings of the 4th International
>>>>>> Symposium on Bilingualism (pp. 1225-1234). Somerville, MA: Cascadilla Press.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> 4) Yu, B. (2013).  Issues in bilingualism and heritage language
>>>>>> maintenance: Perspectives of minority-language mothers of children with
>>>>>> autism spectrum disorders.  American Journal of Speech-Language Pathology,
>>>>>> 22, 10-24.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> I hope those are of use to you.
>>>>>> Best,
>>>>>> Stefka
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>> -----Original Message-----
>>>>>> From: info-childes at googlegroups.com [mailto:
>>>>>> info-childes at googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of Aliyah MORGENSTERN
>>>>>> Sent: November 26, 2013 1:55 PM
>>>>>> To: info-childes at googlegroups.com
>>>>>> Subject: Help: let them speak or sign their language
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Dear info-childes,
>>>>>> I need to find good scientific proof it you think it is relevant and
>>>>>> exists that
>>>>>> 1) it is better for deaf children  (even if they get cochlear
>>>>>> implants quite young) or children who because of some rare patholgoy cannot
>>>>>> speak (like Cornelia de Lange Syndrome) to be "given" a sign language a
>>>>>> soon a possible and to be raised bilingual (bimodal);
>>>>>> 2) it is better for immigrant parents to speak their native language
>>>>>> to their children (unless they are strong psychological or other reasons
>>>>>> not to) rather than a language they are not experts in and for primary
>>>>>> school teachers not to put pressure on the parents for them to only speak
>>>>>> the language of the country they live in;
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Any good papers (if possible the actual paper) or references welcome
>>>>>> especially if they treat both those issues together!
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Happy Thanksgiving to our American colleagues and Happy Chanukah to
>>>>>> our Jewish colleagues (and whoever celebrates those holidays). Sorry if I
>>>>>> don't know about other holidays coming up in the next few days!
>>>>>> Best,
>>>>>> Aliyah
>>>>>>
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>>>>>
>>>>>
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>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> --
>>>> Roberta Michnick Golinkoff, Ph. D.
>>>> Unidel 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/
>>>> 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."
>>>>
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>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> --
>>> Erika Hoff, Professor
>>> Department of Psychology
>>> Florida Atlantic University
>>> 3200 College Ave.
>>> Davie, FL 33314
>>>
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>>
>>
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-- 
Prof Gisela Szagun PhD BSc

www.giselaszagun.com

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