Henner Jon, Caldwell-Harris Catherine L, Novogrodsky Rama, Hoffmeister Robert
Professions in Deafness, Department of Specialized Education Services, University of North Carolina at Greensboro Greensboro, NC, USA.
Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences, Boston University Boston, MA, USA.
Front Psychol. 2016 Dec 26;7:1982. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2016.01982. eCollection 2016.
Failing to acquire language in early childhood because of language deprivation is a rare and exceptional event, except in one population. Deaf children who grow up without access to indirect language through listening, speech-reading, or sign language experience language deprivation. Studies of Deaf adults have revealed that late acquisition of sign language is associated with lasting deficits. However, much remains unknown about language deprivation in Deaf children, allowing myths and misunderstandings regarding sign language to flourish. To fill this gap, we examined signing ability in a large naturalistic sample of Deaf children attending schools for the Deaf where American Sign Language (ASL) is used by peers and teachers. Ability in ASL was measured using a syntactic judgment test and language-based analogical reasoning test, which are two sub-tests of the ASL Assessment Inventory. The influence of two age-related variables were examined: whether or not ASL was acquired from birth in the home from one or more Deaf parents, and the age of entry to the school for the Deaf. Note that for non-native signers, this latter variable is often the age of first systematic exposure to ASL. Both of these types of age-dependent language experiences influenced subsequent signing ability. Scores on the two tasks declined with increasing age of school entry. The influence of age of starting school was not linear. Test scores were generally lower for Deaf children who entered the school of assessment after the age of 12. The positive influence of signing from birth was found for students at all ages tested (7;6-18;5 years old) and for children of all age-of-entry groupings. Our results reflect a continuum of outcomes which show that experience with language is a continuous variable that is sensitive to maturational age.
由于语言剥夺而在幼儿期未能习得语言是一种罕见的特殊情况，但有一种人群除外。那些在成长过程中无法通过听力、唇读或手语获得间接语言的失聪儿童会经历语言剥夺。对成年失聪者的研究表明，手语习得较晚与持续的缺陷有关。然而，关于失聪儿童的语言剥夺仍有许多未知之处，这使得关于手语的神话和误解得以盛行。为了填补这一空白，我们在一个大型自然主义样本中研究了就读于使用美国手语（ASL）的聋人学校的失聪儿童的手语能力。使用句法判断测试和基于语言的类比推理测试来测量ASL能力，这两项测试是ASL评估量表的两个子测试。我们考察了两个与年龄相关的变量的影响：是否从出生起就在家中由一位或多位失聪父母教授ASL，以及进入聋人学校的年龄。请注意，对于非母语手语使用者来说，后一个变量通常是首次系统接触ASL的年龄。这两种与年龄相关的语言经历都会影响随后的手语能力。随着入学年龄的增加，这两项任务的得分都有所下降。入学年龄的影响不是线性的。对于12岁以后进入评估学校的失聪儿童，测试分数通常较低。在所有测试年龄（7;6 - 18;5岁）的学生以及所有入学年龄组的儿童中，都发现了从出生就学习手语的积极影响。我们的结果反映了一系列的结果，表明语言经历是一个对成熟年龄敏感的连续变量。
