Early manual communication in relation to the deaf child's intellectual, social, and communicative functioning

The basic impoverishment of deafness is not lack of hearing but lack of language. To illustrate this, we have only to compare a 4-year-old hearing child, with a working vocabulary of between 2,000 and 3,000 words, to a child of the same age, profoundly deaf since infancy, who may have only a few words at his command. Even more important than vocabulary level, however, is the child's ability to use his language for expressing ideas, needs, and feelings. By the age of 4 years, the hearing child in all cultures has already grasped the rules of grammar syntax that enable him or her to combine words in meaningful ways.     

The receptive communication abilities of deaf students under oral, manual, and combined methods.

Two groups of severely and profoundly deaf students aged 10 to 17 years were tested on their abilities to choose, from a set of four pictures, the one matching a sentence presented on videotape under 11 different communication conditions. The communication conditions involved individual and combined presentations of lipreading, listening, fingerspelling, and signed English. Severely deaf students scored higher than profoundly deaf students under all conditions except those that involved signed English, where the profoundly deaf group scored as high as the severely deaf group. All the students scored higher under conditions that involved audition, including lipreading plus audition, than under audition alone. The discussion of the results highlights methodological problems that made it difficult to interpret some previous studies in this area. Practical implications of the results for both oral education of the deaf and simultaneous communication are also discussed.     

Teaching manual communication to preservice teachers of the deaf in an accredited comprehensive undergraduate teacher preparation program

NOTING THAT there are no standardized manual communication curricula or proficiency assessments available to teacher preparation programs, the author used a case study to describe how preservice teachers of the deaf are taught to incorporate American Sign Language and various forms of signed English as effective communication tools for students who are deaf and hard of hearing. An accredited undergraduate teacher preparation program located in a rural area was selected for the study. Eight curricular components were examined, and data were triangulated from observations, interviews, and document analyses. The author found (a) that manual communication was taught in three required courses making up 6.57% of the overall curriculum, (b) direct application to the classroom was limited, and (c) there was minor misalignment across the eight curricular components examined. The program did not require an exit-level proficiency exam.     

Early intervention using simultaneous communication with deaf infants: the effect on communication development

This report presents findings on an independent evaluation of an early intervention program for severely and profoundly deaf children. Located in Vancouver, British Columbia, this comprehensive program served families with children under age 3. The evaluation included comparison with a matched sample of deaf children without intervention. Included were a developmental assessment and videotape of linguistic and social interactions. Results indicated more developmentally mature communication and higher-quality interaction in families who had received intervention.     

The relation between third graders' after-school care and social, academic, and emotional functioning

Outcome differences associated with types of after-school care were explored among 150 white, predominantly middle-class third graders from a suburban school system. Children returned home to their mothers, attended day-care centers, stayed with sitters, or returned home alone or with siblings. No differences were found between latchkey and mother-care children in terms of their classroom sociometric nominations, academic grades, standardized test scores, conduct grades, self-reports of self-competence, or parent and teacher ratings of the children. Significant differences were found for children who attended day-care centers after school. These children received more negative peer nominations, made lower academic grades, and had lower standardized test scores than either mother-care or latchkey children. The children who stayed with sitters after school received more negative peer nominations than the latchkey and mother-care children but, in other areas, resembled these groups. These outcome differences were apparent in both divorced and intact families. Factors contributing to these differences are examined.     

Parents' and teachers' evaluations of the communicative abilities of deaf children

The authors compared evaluations by parents and teachers of the communicative abilities of deaf children. Such comparisons between parents' and professionals' assessments of the language development of children who are deaf can provide useful information on which to base ecologically valid intervention approaches. A secondary interest of the authors was to investigate the possible influences on language development of gender, the presence or absence of cochlear implantation, and communication modality (i.e., auditory-verbal or bilingual). The study included the mothers and teachers of 14 deaf children educated in auditory-verbal or bilingual programs. Two scales from a survey instrument, Profiles of the Hearing Impaired (Webster & Webster, 1995), were used. No significant differences between the teachers' and parents' evaluations were found. Gender, cochlear implantation, and communication modality were found to have no significant effect on the evaluations.     

Early emotional and communication functioning predicting the academic trajectories of refugee children in Canada

Abstract

We examined how emotional and communication functioning at kindergarten predicted the academic trajectories of refugee children. Drawing from a population-based Canadian cohort, the study followed 629 refugee children from age 5 to 13 and (i) modeled kindergarten, Grade 4, and Grade 7 academic trajectories via group-based trajectory modeling and (ii) investigated to what extent teacher ratings of kindergarten emotional and communication functioning predicted academic trajectory group membership. Three groups were identified: ‘Average’ (n?=?438), ‘Declining’ (n?=?119), and ‘Low-But-Improving’ (n?=?72) groups. Logistic regression analyses revealed that, in comparison to the Average trajectory, lower emotional functioning at kindergarten was associated with an increased likelihood of a Declining academic trajectory, whereas lower communication functioning at kindergarten was associated with a greater likelihood of a Low-But-Improving trajectory (versus an Average trajectory). The findings indicate that refugee children are more likely to overcome early communication challenges versus emotional challenges to achieve academically, and this has important implications for early mental health support.     

Interpersonal communication skills of deaf adolescents and their relationship to communication history

As part of a longitudinal study, the conversational skills of 67 deaf adolescents were assessed in spoken English, simultaneous communication (SimCom) and American Sign Language (ASL). Two groups of students were identified on the basis of the communication used in their current educational program: a small group of 16 students in programs using spoken English (oral) and a larger group of 51 students in programs using sign communication (bimodal). Students in spoken English programs had good spoken English skills and limited ASL skills, whereas the reverse was true for students in bimodal programs. Most students demonstrated sufficient skill in one or more systems to meet basic interpersonal communications needs, but not those required for advanced academic discourse. In neither group was spoken English related to ASL skill. SimCom skills were strongly related to spoken English in the oral program group and to ASL in the bimodal program group. Spoken English in adolescence was highly predictable from spoken English in early childhood. Within the bimodal program group, students with deaf parents had better SimCom and ASL skills than those with hearing parents. Among bimodal program students with hearing parents, better SimCom skills (but not ASL skills) were associated with earlier introduction to sign communication in school and to mothers' use of sign communication.