Professions in Deafness Program, Department of Specialized Education Services, University of North Carolina at Greensboro.
Center for Research and Training, Framingham, MA.
J Speech Lang Hear Res. 2019 Jan 30;62(1):93-105. doi: 10.1044/2018_JSLHR-L-18-0062.
Purpose This article examines whether syntactic and vocabulary abilities in American Sign Language (ASL) facilitate 6 categories of language-based analogical reasoning. Method Data for this study were collected from 267 deaf participants, aged 7;6 (years;months) to 18;5. The data were collected from an ongoing study initially funded by the U.S. Institute of Education Sciences in 2010. The participants were given assessments of ASL vocabulary and syntax knowledge and a task of language-based analogies presented in ASL. The data were analyzed using mixed-effects linear modeling to first see how language-based analogical reasoning developed in deaf children and then to see how ASL knowledge influenced this developmental trajectory. Results Signing deaf children were shown to demonstrate language-based reasoning abilities in ASL consistent with both chronological age and home language environment. Notably, when ASL vocabulary and syntax abilities were statistically taken into account, these were more important in fostering the development of language-based analogical reasoning abilities than were chronological age and home language. We further showed that ASL vocabulary ability and ASL syntactic knowledge made different contributions to different analogical reasoning subconstructs. Conclusions ASL is a viable language that supports the development of language-based analogical reasoning abilities in deaf children.
目的 本文考察了美国手语（ASL）中的句法和词汇能力是否有助于 6 类基于语言的类比推理。
方法 本研究的数据来自 267 名年龄在 7；6（岁；月）至 18；5 岁的聋人参与者。这些数据是从 2010 年美国教育科学研究所最初资助的一项正在进行的研究中收集的。参与者接受了 ASL 词汇和句法知识评估以及 ASL 呈现的基于语言的类比任务。使用混合效应线性模型进行数据分析，首先观察聋童的基于语言的类比推理能力如何发展，然后观察 ASL 知识如何影响这一发展轨迹。
结果 研究表明，聋童在 ASL 中表现出与年龄和家庭语言环境一致的基于语言的推理能力。值得注意的是，当统计上考虑到 ASL 词汇和句法能力时，它们对培养基于语言的类比推理能力比年龄和家庭语言更为重要。我们进一步表明，ASL 词汇能力和 ASL 句法知识对不同的类比推理子结构有不同的贡献。
结论 ASL 是一种可行的语言，它支持聋童基于语言的类比推理能力的发展。
