Berger Lauren, Pyers Jennie, Lieberman Amy, Caselli Naomi
Boston University.
Wellesley College.
Lang Acquis. 2024;31(2):85-99. doi: 10.1080/10489223.2023.2178312. Epub 2023 Apr 17.
Most deaf children have hearing parents who do not know a sign language at birth, and are at risk of limited language input during early childhood. Studying these children as they learn a sign language has revealed that timing of first-language exposure critically shapes language outcomes. But the input deaf children receive in their first language is not only delayed, it is much more variable than most first language learners, as many learn their first language from parents who are themselves new sign language learners. Much of the research on deaf children learning a sign language has considered the role of parent input using broad strokes, categorizing hearing parents as non-native, poor signers, and deaf parents as native, strong signers. In this study, we deconstruct these categories, and examine how variation in sign language skills among hearing parents might affect children's vocabulary acquisition. This study included 44 deaf children between 8- and 60-months-old who were learning ASL and had hearing parents who were also learning ASL. We observed an interactive effect of parent ASL proficiency and age, such that parent ASL proficiency was a significant predictor of child ASL vocabulary size, but not among the infants and toddlers. The proficiency of language models can affect acquisition above and beyond age of acquisition, particularly as children grow. At the same time, the most skilled parents in this sample were not as fluent as "native" deaf signers, and yet their children reliably had age-expected ASL vocabularies. Data and reproducible analyses are available at https://osf.io/9ya6h/.
大多数失聪儿童的父母听力正常，他们在孩子出生时并不懂手语，这使得孩子在幼儿期面临语言输入受限的风险。对这些学习手语的儿童进行研究发现，第一语言接触的时机对语言学习成果有着至关重要的影响。但是失聪儿童接受的第一语言输入不仅延迟，而且比大多数第一语言学习者的输入更加多变，因为许多孩子是从自身也是新手语学习者的父母那里学习第一语言的。许多关于失聪儿童学习手语的研究都宽泛地考虑了父母输入的作用，将听力正常的父母归类为非母语、手语能力差的人，而将失聪的父母归类为母语、手语能力强的人。在本研究中，我们对这些类别进行了解构，并考察听力正常的父母手语技能的差异如何影响孩子的词汇习得。这项研究纳入了44名年龄在8至60个月之间、正在学习美国手语（ASL）且父母听力正常且也在学习ASL的失聪儿童。我们观察到父母的ASL熟练程度和年龄之间存在交互作用，即父母的ASL熟练程度是孩子ASL词汇量的一个重要预测因素，但在婴幼儿中并非如此。语言模型的熟练程度对习得的影响超出了习得年龄，尤其是在孩子成长过程中。与此同时，该样本中最熟练的父母并不像“母语”失聪手语者那样流利，但他们的孩子却可靠地拥有符合年龄预期的ASL词汇量。数据和可重复分析可在https://osf.io/9ya6h/获取。
