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We investigate the roles of linguistic and sensory experience in the early-produced visual, auditory, and abstract words of congenitally-blind toddlers, deaf toddlers, and typicallysighted/ hearing peers. We also assess the role of language access by comparing early word production in children learning English or American Sign Language (ASL) from birth, versus at a delay. Using parental report data on child word production from the MacArthur-Bates Communicative Development Inventory, we found evidence that while children produced words referring to imperceptible referents before age 2, such words were less likely to be produced relative to words with perceptible referents. For instance, blind (vs. sighted) children said fewer highly visual words like “blue” or “see”; deaf signing (vs. hearing) children produced fewer auditory signs like HEAR. Additionally, in spoken English and ASL, children who received delayed language access were less likely to produce words overall. These results demonstrate and begin to quantify how linguistic and sensory access may influence which words young children produce.
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Sustained Visual Attention in Deaf Children: A Deafcentric Perspective
There is an ongoing debate in the field of early intervention and deaf education about the differences in executive functions between deaf and nondeaf children and what might give rise to them (Hall, 2020; Kronenberger & Pisoni, 2020; Morgan & Dye, 2020). Executive functions encompass cognitive abilities that allow a child to successfully perform tasks by planning and organizing their actions, and by maintaining focus on their goals and avoiding distraction (for a review see Diamond, 2013). Executive functions include a range of abilities, often studied in isolation, such as working memory (Baddeley, 2012), inhibition (Bari & Robbins, 2013), and sustained attention (Fisher, 2019). Studies of deaf children from nondeaf families 2 who have received a cochlear implant have reported deficits and large variability in outcomes for a number of these executive functions (Castellanos, Pisoni, Kronenberger, and Beer, 2016; Kronenberger, Beer, Castellanos, Pisoni, and Miyamoto (2014); Lyxell, Sahlén, Wass, Ibertsson, Larsby, Hällgren, & Mäki-Torkko, 2008; Quittner, Barker, Snell, Cruz, McDonald, Grimley, Botteri, Marciel, & CDaCI Investigative Team, 2007). Several different proposals have been put forward to explain the large degree of variability in this population of children. Those proposals differ in what they see as the optimal approach to early intervention and/or remediation of executive function. Some argue that rehabilitation of hearing loss is the best approach (Kral, Kronenberger, Pisoni, & O’Donoghue, 2016), others that establishing healthy communication between caregiver and child is critical (Morgan & Dye, 2020), and yet others that early exposure to and acquisition of a natural sign language is the best approach (Hall, 2020). In this chapter we will focus on just one of the executive functions – sustained attention – and use that (a) to explore the evidence for and against different approaches, and (b) to consider how some of those approaches interpret data based upon what we claim is an audiocentric perspective that fails to acknowledge or appreciate the experience and authority of deaf people.
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- Award ID(s):
- 1550988
- PAR ID:
- 10614203
- Publisher / Repository:
- Routledge
- Date Published:
- ISBN:
- 9780367808686
- Page Range / eLocation ID:
- 60-72
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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- Free Publicly Accessible Full Text
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Accepted Manuscript1.0
- Book Chapter:
- https://doi.org/10.4324/9780367808686-5-6
