Language Development in Exceptional Circumstances: Auditory Impairment
The study of child language acquisition became of interest to
psycholinguists in the 1960’s after Chomsky’s suggestion that the
study of the development of language would provide evidence for
theories of language. Ever since these initial studies, theorists have
used the development of child language to study issues such as the
contexts of interaction in which language arises and the importance of
parental input. After the explosion of interest in language
acquisition linguists began to take an interest in the development of
language (more specifically sign language) in deaf children. By
examining a selection of these studies I will attempt to discuss the
implications of the studies in comparison to language acquisition
theories.
Deafness or the extent of deafness is generally not confirmed until
the child reaches age one. Surprisingly, despite their auditory
impairment deaf babies coo and babble in the same way as babies with
normal hearing and follow Stark’s stages of vocal pronunciation until
approximately 9 months. Up until this point the infants cry, coo,
laugh and babble. They also use the same phonetic inventory as hearing
children which consists mainly of nasals and stops. At the age of
approximately 9 months the infants begin to produce more labials, this
is presumably because they can rely upon visual cues, but their speech
soon begins to disappear.
To begin with I will confirm my definition of deaf infants as those
who have congenital hearing impairments with a severity of 90db or
more. As a result of auditory impairment these children, who ...
... middle of paper ...
...and Bacon.
Bellugi, & Klima (1972) The Roots of language in the sign talk of the
deaf. Psychology Today 6.
Bonvillain, Orlansky & Novak (1983) in Kyle and Woll (1983) Language
in sign: an international perspective on sign language. London. Croom
Helm
Goldin-Meadow, S & Mylander, Carolyn, (1982) Gestural Communication in
deaf children: Non-effect of Parental Input on language: Science Vol
221 p372
Kyle and Woll. (1983) Language in sign: an international perspective
on sign language. London. Croom Helm.
Maestes and Moores (1980) in Kyle and Woll (1983) Language in sign: an
international perspective on sign language. London. Croom Helm
Pinker, S (1995) The Language Instinct. London: Allan Lane.
Sutton-Spence, Rachel (1994) The linguistics of British Sign Language:
an introduction. Cambridge. CUP
The child is at stage three linguistic speech in oral development (Fellows & Oakley, 2014). They show evidence of this in both their receptive and expressive language meeting the criteria for this stage (Fellows & Oakley, 2014). They show evidence of their receptive language by their ability in being able to understand opposites (Fellows & Oakley, 2014). While they had some issues with the differences between soft and scratchy they were able to demonstrate the differences between big and little several times during the dialogue. They showed evidence of their expressive language by their use of telegraphic speech, expanding vocabulary and in the ability to take in turns of speaking and listening (Fellows & Oakley, 2014). Telegraphic
I am currently an art education major, but my dream has always been to work and possibly teach at a deaf school. I was born with a hearing impairment. I was not deaf but I was hard-of-hearing. We did not know about this hearing impairment until I was about four or five years old. I taught myself to read lips, so for the longest time they thought I was just stubborn and hardheaded, but little did they know I just could not hear them. When I was around five years old I went to an audiologist and had ear tube surgery. After that my hearing was 90 percent better. I still struggle every now and then if someone is not facing me when they are talking, but it is much better. Ever since then I have thought sign language and the Deaf community is extremely interesting!
For a lesbian couple that is unable to have a child, with just to two of them, in vitro fertilization with use of a sperm donor is an option. When implanting the embryos “a vast majority of people believe that one ought to want a healthy and happy child” (Weijer, Anthony and Brennan. 2013. p.37). However, people have deferring views on what counts as healthy. The couple that I will have discussed in this paper are both deaf and they want only the embryo’s where there is a high chance of the child being deaf to be implanted (Weijer et al. 2013. p.55). Using pre-implantation genetic diagnosis the couple is able to do this (Weijer et al. 2013. p.37). Both arguments, for and against, will be discussed. Choosing for your child to be deaf is wrong.
When infants are acquiring their first language, adults speak to them differently than they would speak to other adults. This kind of speech is formally named “Infant-Directed speech”, but is also referred to as “baby talk” and “motherese”. Infant-Directed (ID) speech has several properties that distinguish it from Adult-Directed (AD) speech. There is a debate over whether or not ID speech helps infants acquire language or is a hindrance in their language acquisition process Several experiments have been performed to test the effect of ID speech on infants’ language learning. These experiments all used different properties of ID speech. Overall, the experiments have proved that ID speech helps infants acquire language better than AD speech for different reasons. Further studies can be performed on ID speech to learn more about its effects on second language acquisition and on different ages.
The Deaf Community is a multitude of communities where people who are deaf and know ASL (American Sign Language) can live together, but do they get the amount of support from other communities that they need?
The Deaf community has dealt with and are currently dealing with many hardships in their lifetime. One of the struggles they are presently facing today is the term audism. Audism is one of the types of isms, where the hearing community believe that they are superior because they are able to hear. They portray this negative behavior towards the deaf community that it is a misfortune to be deaf. Their negative behavior expresses that those who are deaf must do their best to fit in with the “hearing world”. They forbid the use of sign language, forcing people who are deaf to learn how to speak and lip read. Although this stigma exists, the deaf community has successful striven in proving
The mind of an infant and toddler is a sponge to language. Whether or not the child is able to speak, their brain is rehearsing and affirming the linguistic structures they hear, and the period of baby talk—called “babbling”—is a crucial time of experimentation with sound. During this time, the child will babble while in social situations in order to see which phonological structures receive positive responses from their parents—i.e. which combinations of sounds elicit responses. If a child cannot hear the sounds that their language offers, the child does not have the opportunity to babble. A child with significant hearing loss will still make sounds in infancy, but will quickly cease due to the lack of response and the fact that they cannot hear the sounds they are making and so cannot affirm them for themselves.
"Having Down syndrome is like being born normal. I am just like you and you are just like me. We are all born in different ways, that is the way I can describe it. I have a normal life"(Burke, C., n.d.). Where special education is concerned, one must always remember that exceptional learners are different, not less. In the following studies, the various strengths and weaknesses of the language and communication of individuals with Down syndrome (DS) is reviewed and discussed.
Neuronal plasticity found in infants, and the learning process has been of keen interest to neurobiologists for some time. How does the brain develop and attain the skills we need as one grows is fascinating. It is commonly understood that a crying infant can only be consoled by his/her mother, and is able to recognize her voice over the voice of a stranger. A number of studies have also been done on the distinct reaction of infants to sounds of their own language versus a foreign language, familiar melodies or fragments of stories they may have heard repeatedly during the fetus stage (Partanen et. al, 2013). However, these studies relied heavily on the infant’s reactions, which bared little credibility (Skwarecki, 2013). One research team developed a technique to show that infants actually develop memory of the sounds they hear while in the womb, and are able to recognize the similar sounds at the time of birth. The team was able to trace changes in brain activity in new born infants, and thus provided quantitative evidence that memory forms before birth (Partanen et. al, 2013). This paper begins by examining the literature that identifies associations between MMR used as a tool to measure auditory input and Exposure to Psuedoword and how its varations create memory traces.
Today’s society consists of numerous individuals who are diagnosed with disabilities that prevent them from partaking in their everyday tasks. Not everyone gets the chance to live a normal life because they might have a problem or sickness that they have to overcome. Deafness is a disability that enables people to hear. All deafness is not alike; it can range in many different forms. Some people like Gauvin, can be helped with a hearing aid, but some can’t because of their situation and health reasons. In society, hearing individuals consider deafness a disability, while the deaf themselves see it as a cultural significance. In the article “Victims from Birth”, appearing in ifemnists.com, Founding Editor Wendy McElroy, provides the story of
There are four components which can be expressed by every culture and they include language, values, behavioral norms and traditions according to Deaf & hard of hearing – Deaf culture fact sheet, (2015). These factors have thereby led to the differences in. By comparing the three cultures will help and individual have a better perspective and understanding what their values and beliefs are thereby defining their differences.
Language Development in Children Language is a multifaceted instrument used to communicate an unbelievable number of different things. Primary categories are information, direction, emotion, and ceremony. While information and direction define cognitive meaning, emotional language expresses emotional meaning. Ceremonial language is mostly engaged with emotions, but at some level information and direction collection may be used to define a deeper meaning and purpose. There is perhaps nothing more amazing than the surfacing of language in children.
This study primarily focused on examining the role of caregivers in language development within both children with prenatal or perinatal brain injury (BI) and typically developing children (TD). Previous research has shown that lesion characteristic played an important role on the adaptability of linguistic development in children with BI. However like TD children, children with BI tend to have easy compliance towards language development.
...d to determine exactly which part of the language is innate and universal so that humans can further uncover the valuable mechanism.
Still today, it is the commonly held belief that children acquire their mother tongue through imitation of the parents, caregivers or the people in their environment. Linguists too had the same conviction until 1957, when a then relatively unknown man, A. Noam Chomsky, propounded his theory that the capacity to acquire language is in fact innate. This revolutionized the study of language acquisition, and after a brief period of controversy upon the publication of his book, Aspects of the Theory of Syntax, in 1964, his theories are now generally accepted as largely true. As a consequence, he was responsible for the emergence of a new field during the 1960s, Developmental Psycholinguistics, which deals with children’s first language acquisition. He was not the first to question our hitherto mute acceptance of a debatable concept – long before, Plato wondered how children could possibly acquire so complex a skill as language with so little experience of life. Experiments have clearly identified an ability to discern syntactical nuances in very young infants, although they are still at the pre-linguistic stage. Children of three, however, are able to manipulate very complicated syntactical sentences, although they are unable to tie their own shoelaces, for example. Indeed, language is not a skill such as many others, like learning to drive or perform mathematical operations – it cannot be taught as such in these early stages. Rather, it is the acquisition of language which fascinates linguists today, and how it is possible. Noam Chomsky turned the world’s eyes to this enigmatic question at a time when it was assumed to have a deceptively simple explanation.