Journal of Deaf Studies and Deaf Education最新文献

Evidence is lacking on the impact of bilingualism on the speech skills of children with cochlear implants (CIs). This study described the speech production of children with CIs acquiring French and one or more additional spoken languages. Four groups of children aged 4-11 were included: bilinguals (n = 15) and monolinguals (n = 14) with CIs and bilinguals (n = 14) and monolinguals (n = 20) with typical hearing. Data were collected about the percentage of consonant correct (PCC) and vowel correct (PVC) produced in French and intelligibility in all languages they spoke. Bilingual and monolingual children with CIs had comparable speech accuracy in French, but the pattern differed, impacting PCC for bilinguals and PVC for monolinguals. Most children with CIs had accurate and intelligible speech in French, but few bilingual children with CIs were highly intelligible in their home language. Therefore, bilingualism did not impede the speech production outcomes of bilingual children with CIs in the language of the wider community.

Narrative language samples can be used to measure language development in children, but research on narrative development in deaf and hard-of-hearing (DHH) children is scarce, limiting knowledge of developmental stages and best practices for collection and analysis. This scoping review included 39 articles that explored recent methodologies and achievements in oral or signed narratives of DHH children, including comparisons with hearing peers and within-group analyses of early auditory experience, device use, and other measures. Articles featured DHH participants aged < 4 to 18 years, varying in device use, communication modalities, and educational settings. Most studies utilized story generation tasks with early elementary-aged children and analyzed either microstructure or macrostructure. Mixed results in comparisons with hearing children emphasized the need to consider individual differences (e.g., speech perception and age of spoken language access) in DHH narrative assessments. Findings also suggest that comparability across studies would be improved by more consistent terminology and procedures in narrative collection/analysis.

We investigated relations between kindergarten precursors and second-grade reading skills in deaf and hard-of-hearing (DHH) children, and aimed to identify subgroups based on reading skills, in order to explore early signs of later reading delays. DHH children (n = 23, Mage kindergarten = 6.25) participated from kindergarten-second grade. They were tested on phonological awareness, letter knowledge, spoken vocabulary, speechreading, fingerspelling, and sign vocabulary in kindergarten, and word decoding and reading comprehension in second grade. In second grade, word decoding scores were low-average while reading comprehension scores were below average compared to hearing norms. Word decoding correlated with phonological awareness, letter knowledge, and spoken vocabulary. Reading comprehension correlated with all measures except fingerspelling. Cluster analysis identified three second-grade-reading subgroups; group-1: below-average word decoding and reading comprehension; group-2: high-average word decoding, below-average reading comprehension; group-3: average word decoding and reading comprehension. Furthermore, group-1 differed from group-2 and group-3 on word decoding, group-1 and group-2 differed from group-3 in reading comprehension. Regarding kindergarten measures, group-1 scored below group-2 on letter knowledge, and below group-3 on spoken and sign vocabulary. We found that particularly letter knowledge and spoken and sign vocabulary seem to be crucial for the development of reading skills 2 years later.

In this study, 19 college-educated deaf adults with experience using interpreters in educational settings provided insights into how successfully various elements of classroom discourse were preserved through interpretation. The deaf adults, fluent in American Sign Language (ASL) and experienced at using interpreters, watched educational interpreters' renditions of an elementary school art lesson, and answered questions, providing information about the clarity, completeness, and coherence of the message. Next, the deaf adults were asked to compare what they saw in the first interpretation of the lesson to what was conveyed in a second iteration by a highly experienced interpreter familiar with the lesson whose first language is ASL. A control group of 16 hearing adults accessing the lesson directly from the teacher answered the same questions. For the elements of classroom discourse studied-main ideas, project instructions, mental state references, and relevance strategies-results showed a substantial difference between what the hearing participants in the direct presentation condition received and what the deaf adults accessing the message through the educational interpreters received. Qualitative analyses of the differences-between the direct versus interpreted versions and between the deaf participants' responses to the two interpretations-revealed tendencies for, and ramifications of, alterations and omissions in classroom discourse.

College-level deaf and hard-of-hearing (DHH) students and hearing students of English as a Second Language (L2) along with hearing native speakers (NS) of English were assessed in their knowledge of English resultative and depictive sentences. In "Kevin wiped the table clean," the resultative phrase "clean" indicates that the table became clean as a result of Kevin wiping it. In "Megan drove the car drunk," the depictive phrase "drunk" describes Megan's state throughout the entire event of driving. Findings of a sentence-acceptability rating scale task revealed higher performance by the NS group compared to the DHH and L2 groups, whose near-equivalent performance improved with increasing overall English proficiency. Participants exhibited higher performance on active, passive, and unaccusative resultative sentences than on ungrammatical unergative resultatives and higher performance on grammatical than ungrammatical depictive sentence types. These findings contribute new insights into the comparative study of English acquisition by DHH and L2 learners.

This article investigates the narrative skills of children acquiring Finnish Sign Language (FinSL). Producing a narrative requires vocabulary, the ability to form sentences, and cognitive skills to construct actions in a logical order for the recipient to understand the story. Research has shown that narrative skills are an excellent way of observing a child's language skills, for they reflect both grammatical language skills and the ability to use the language in situationally appropriate ways. This study was conducted using the FinSL Narrative Skills Production Test assessment to observe how narrative skills develop in children between the ages of 4 and 11 who acquire FinSL in their natural language environments. The results show that the narrative skills of children acquiring FinSL develop following the same guidelines found in other signed and spoken languages. Narrative structure and content increase with age.