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Language Deprivation in Deaf and Hard of Hearing Children

Language Deprivation occurs when a child does not receive language exposure during the critical early years of life. Language development is severely delayed due to the lack of key stimulation and socialization. This has been observed in such well known cases as Genie, Kaspar Hauser, Anna, and Isabelle as well as cases of feral children such as Victor. Similar results can be more frequently be seen in Deaf and Hard of Hearing (DHH) children.

Video: LEAD-K

Contributing Factors

Lack of Awareness

More than 90% of Deaf and Hard of Hearing (DHH) children are born to hearing parents, parents who are often unfamiliar with deafness and are unsure with how to proceed down the right path for their child. Many doctors and early intervention specialists have little experience with children with hearing loss and are not trained in best practices for their development.

Access to Language

Throughout a normal day, hearing children continually receive input from TV, radio, surrounding conversations, narration of events throughout their day, and so on. Through these avenues they receive information about language structure, how we use language to interact with one another and many other vital cognitive and social processes. DHH children have limited to no access to this equivalent input subsequently missing out on the same critical, early development as their hearing peers.

Educational Placements

DHH children often arrive to kindergarten at age 5 already significantly behind their hearing peers (in vocabulary development, social interactions, and other cognitive processes). Ineffective approaches can inhibit their access to formal instruction in school and further delay their development. Due to hearing loss, they cannot access language in the same way as their hearing peers yet hearing approaches have historically been used. These approaches often assume that English is their L1 (First language) and that these L1 foundations in English are already strong, having been set from birth to age 5. Educational placements designed for hearing students often prove to be unsuccessful for DHH students.

Implications

Early language

Children normally will be exposed to language at a young age. The critical period of language development occurs from birth and continues to age 5. During this period, the child develops language in structure such as syntax, social and brain development. When a child is not exposed to language early, the child will develop delays. This is often the case among Deaf and Hard of Hearing children because this population has limited access to language. Deaf children should be exposed to language at birth/early age.

Early intervention services that provide sign to DHH children result in those children achieving language early. Early access to language provides a foundation for developing and acquiring other languages regardless of modality. DHH children who attend early intervention programs have been found to have a higher fluency in language up to age five.

Educational placement

• There are four educational placements for Deaf and Hard of Hearing students
  • Deaf Schools
    • Provide classes with only Deaf and Hard of Hearing students
    • Older students have the option to reside at the school if there are dorms available
    • In most Deaf schools, there is an emphasis on sign language with or without spoken support
    • Bilingualism is also increasing in separate schools (find source)
  • Mainstream general education classroom
    • This classroom is located in a public school where all of the students and teachers are hearing
    • A Deaf student in a general education classroom may receive extra supports such as Teacher of the Deaf, Interpreter, Notetaker, Speech Language Pathologist
    • Often times, the Teacher of the Deaf pulls out the student to work one-on-one with the student.
  • Self-contained classroom
    • This classroom is located in a public school where most other students are hearing
    • Students can spend all of their time in a self-contained classroom taught with or without other Deaf students or be placed in regular classrooms for certain subjects of the day
    • Teachers of the Deaf usually work with students for at least some part of the day
  • Co-enrollment classes
    • This classroom serves both Deaf and hearing students
    • All students are typically taught in sign language regardless of audiological status

Current Debates

Sign language and Spoken language

• Some DHH children have residual hearing and may benefit from the use of amplification devices such as hearing aids, cochlear implants, BAHAs, etc. Some parents and professionals may desire to capitalize on what hearing a child may have left .
• Some fear that learning sign language will cause delays in spoken language while there is research that instead shows that development of sign language can aid in the development of spoken language.
• Deaf children may benefit more from bilingual learning, sign language and spoken language. This approach may help a child’s social and cognitive skills, and acquire language properly by following a plan.
• Programs such as Early Intervention are available that can meet the wide range of needs of DHH children without further delaying their language development.

Efforts to Remediate

Bilingual Approaches

• Approaches that use foundations in American Sign Language (ASL) to develop proficient reading and writing skills in English. Bilingual programs can also address the needs of those students who may be able to access spoken language as well. When ASL functions as the child's first language, it helps support second language acquisition. Research done in bilingual fields show that if a child is fluent in a second language, it is due to the proficiency of a first language.

LEAD-K

• LEAD-K stands for Language Equality & Acquisition for Deaf Kids. The LEAD-K initiative is striving to end language deprivation by promoting equal access to language, and putting new laws in place to ensure that Deaf and Hard of Hearing (DHH) children arrive to school kindergarten-ready. The main goal of LEAD-K is to promote a foundation for English literacy within Deaf and Hard of Hearing children. Often times, Deaf and Hard of Hearing children are arriving to Kindergarten without adequate language skills in both American Sign Language and/or English. LEAD-K is aiming to get students ready for Kindergarten regardless of the language they use. LEAD-K believes this will help reduce the effects of language deprivation. This bill has already been passed in California, Kansas and Hawaii within the United States.

Resources

• http://www.lead-k.org/
• Cummins, J. (2000). Language, power, and pedagogy: Bilingual children in the crossfire. Buffalo, NY: Multilingual Matters, Ltd.
• Dickinson, D., Golinkoff, R., & Hirsh-Pasek, K. (2010). Speaking out for language: Why language is central to reading development. Educational Researcher, 39 (4), 305-310. Data (pp. 881-938). Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.Research in Child Language Disorders, Madison, WI.
• http://deafchildren.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/ASDC-Article-VL2-Advantages-of-Early-Visual-Language.pdf
• Yoshinaga-Itano, C. (2008). Lessons learned from universal newborn hearing screening. Paper presented at the annual meeting of the Conference of Educational Administrators of Schools for the Deaf, Great Falls, MT. 37.
• Yoshinaga-Itano, C. (2006). Early identification, communication modality, and the development of speech and spoken language skills: Patterns and considerations. In P.E. Spencer & M. Marschark (Eds.), Advances in the spoken language development of deaf and hard-of-hearing children (pp. 298-327). New York: Oxford University Press.
• Stinson, M. S., & Kluwin, T. N. (2011). Educational Consequences of Alternative School Placements. Oxford Handbooks Online. doi:10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199750986.013.000
• Friedmann, N., & Rusou, D. (2015). Critical period for first language: the crucial role of language input during the first year of life. Current opinion in neurobiology, 35, 27-34. (strong enough?)
• https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3072291/
• http://mayberrylab.ucsd.edu/papers/Mayberry_HndBkNeuropsych02.pdf

• Nussbaum, D. B., Scott, S., & Simms, L. E. (2012). The" why" and" how" of an ASL/English bimodal bilingual program. Odyssey: New Directions in Deaf Education, 13, 14-19.
• Humphries, T., Kushalnagar, P., Mathur, G., Napoli, D. J., Padden, C., & Rathmann, C. (2014). Ensuring language acquisition for deaf children: What linguists can do. Language, 90(2), e31-e52.
• Powers, S. (2002). From concepts to practice in deaf education: A United Kingdom perspective on inclusion. Journal of deaf Studies and deaf Education, 7(3), 230-243.
• Pichler, D. C., Lee, J., & Lillo-Martin, D. (2014). Language development in ASL–English bimodal bilinguals. Multilingual aspects of signed language communication and disorder, 11, 235.
• Marschark, M., Schick, B., & Spencer, P. E. (2006). Understanding sign language development of deaf children. Advances in the sign language development of deaf children, 3-19. (April- maybe its outdated for wikipedia.)
• https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/language-teaching/article/div-classtitledeaf-childrenandaposs-bimodal-bilingualism-and-educationdiv/6E187F469C3490983410060EC906164B

Categories

Deaf, Hard of Hearing, Hearing Loss, Cochlear Implants, ASL, Deaf Education, Language Deprivation, Early Intervention, Deaf Studies