The Signs of Language Revisited

An Anthology To Honor Ursula Bellugi and Edward Klima

Karen Emmorey, Harlan L. Lane

• Publisher: Psychology Press
• Year: 2013
• Print ISBN: 9780805832464
• eBook ISBN: 9781135669003
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Psychology
• Subtopic: History & Theory in Psychology
• Index: Psychology

The burgeoning of research on signed language during the last two decades has had a major influence on several disciplines concerned with mind and language, including linguistics, neuroscience, cognitive psychology, child language acquisition, sociolinguistics, bilingualism, and deaf education. The genealogy of this research can be traced to a remarkable degree to a single pair of scholars, Ursula Bellugi and Edward Klima, who have conducted their research on signed language and educated scores of scholars in the field since the early 1970s. The Signs of Language Revisited has three major objectives:
* presenting the latest findings and theories of leading scientists in numerous specialties from language acquisition in children to literacy and deaf people;
* taking stock of the distance scholarship has come in a given field, where we are now, and where we should be headed; and
* acknowledging and articulating the intellectual debt of the authors to Bellugi and Klima--in some cases through personal reminiscences.
Thus, this book is also a document in the sociology and history of science.

V

Language Acquisition

18

Viewing Deaf Children in a New Way: Implications of Bellugi and Klima’s Research for Education

Jeffrey G.Bettger

San Francisco State University

Consider two scenarios. In the first scenario, a child frolics contentedly in a crib. Nevertheless, anxious parents eagerly look for any indication that their child can hear them. Louder and louder the parents call the child’s name. The child does not respond. Seeing a toy horse in the crib, the child gleefully points to it. Without noticing, the parents look at each other somberly. The doctor was right. Their child cannot hear.

In the second scenario, a child frolics contentedly in a crib. The happy parents eagerly look for any indication that their child is trying to communicate. Seeing a toy horse in the crib, the child smiles and points to it. The parents joyfully recount to each other what has just happened, not with spoken words, but with manual signs. Quickly and naturally, the parents pick up the toy, make sure the child is still watching, and then display the manual sign “horse.” The parents then proudly position the child’s tiny hands into the same shape. Their child can sign!

The two scenarios differ in many ways. For example, only in the second scenario do we see evidence of joint attention, recognized intentions, language training, and social bonding. From this information alone, what might researchers and educators predict about the cognitive development and language acquisition of the two children? Notice that I did not say English acquisition. I said language acquisition.

In the early 1970s, Ursula Bellugi and Ed Klima were awarded a grant to study the acquisition of American Sign Language (ASL) by Deaf children. This chapter is a tribute to their 30 years of sign language research and its many implications for Deaf education. Consequently, I review past trends in Deaf education, point out the key elements of the Bellugi and Klima acquisition research, and then discuss the impact of their research on current Deaf education.

Before continuing, two clarifications must be made. First, it needs to be said that no one or two people can make a truly important contribution alone. Therefore, in the remainder of this chapter, all references to “the research of Bellugi and Klima,” should be interpreted as, “the research of Bellugi and Klima, along With their numerous outstanding Deaf and hearing colleagues, postdoctoral researchers, graduate students, consultants, technicians, and staff.” Perhaps the true genius of their legacy has been Bellugi’s and Klima’s ability to motivate and guide bright young minds and experts in other fields to join in the study of ASL.

The second clarification is that all references to Deaf children in this chapter do not include children who have become deafened postlingually or who have hearing losses so mild so as not to significantly impair their ability to hear English. A common problem in Deaf-related research and education is that the term deafness is used to cover a wide range of hearing losses and onsets. Clearly, a child who loses some hearing at age 8 does not follow the same language acquisition path as does a child born with complete hearing loss. Unfortunately, many educational policies must cover such a broad range of children.

A Matter of Perspective

When you have been influenced by the Bellugi and Klima research being celebrated in this book, you take for granted that ASL is a language equal to any spoken language, that hearing people should communicate with Deaf persons in sign or through a signing interpreter, that spoken languages and educational signing systems (e.g., SEE) cannot be a Deaf child’s first language, and that much is left to learn about Deaf cultures and sign languages around the world. In general, Deaf persons are seen as different, not necessarily disabled. In the education world, this general attitude has been traditionally adopted only by the residential schools for the Deaf.

More commonly, professionals associated with hearing impairment (educators, speech therapists, audiologists) have felt that Deafness is a medical condition needing a cure and have traditionally valued Oralism (the use of speech and lipreading) or systems of English-based signing over ASL, contending that natural sign languages (such as ASL) do not help produce literacy skills or the production of speech (such as English). These opinions have led to an abundance of research based on the following questions: How can auditory input be increased for hearing-impaired children? How can these children become members of the hearing world? What is causing low English literacy skills in Deaf children?

This philosophy, commonly referred to as the “Medical Model,” has led to the following: the development of cochlear implants; “inclusion” of Deaf children in classrooms in which they may be the only nonhearing child; laws that label the Deaf community as a singular, homogeneous, disabled group; standards for teaching credentials that do not include mandatory proficiency in ASL or Deaf culture; and Deaf children who are frequently not proficient in ASL or English. In fact, much of the education research pertaining to Deaf children’s language acquisition does not contain any assessment of their ASL skills. For audiologists, speech pathologists, and many educators of the Deaf, the message is clear: Language equals English.

History of Deaf Education

Prior to 1880, sign language was commonly the language of instruction for Deaf children, and approximately 50% of all teachers of the deaf were Deaf themselves (Lane, 1984). However, in 1880, the International Congress of Educators of the Deaf met in Milan, Italy, and decided that the availability of a sign language hindered a Deaf child from learning how to speak. Therefore, it was decided that signing should be discouraged and that Deaf children should be encouraged to develop lipreading and speaking skills (i.e., Oralism). This philosophy inevitably led to a decline in the percentage of Deaf teachers. No longer were their experience, insight, culture, and sign language valued.

In the 1970s, educators observed that English literacy scores for deaf children were still low and that the children were using sign language on the playground. This led to the idea that perhaps combining ASL signs and the grammar of English would lead to improved literacy scores. Thus was born various systems of signing English. Using this system, hearing teachers try to speak English while simultaneously producing corresponding sign forms. Neither this signing English philosophy nor the Oral method has been the desired cure-all for Deaf literacy woes.

To Bravely Go

Given this history and the two scenarios presented at the beginning of this chapter, one can see the polarized and emotional arena in which Bellugi and Klima have conducted their sign language research over the years. Their first major obstacle, however, came not from emotional parents or dogmatic educators but rather from uninterested academics.

After choosing to study ASL, Bellugi and Klima soon discovered that the study of language acquisition cannot proceed until journal editors and granting agencies believe you are studying a “real” language. With his experience studying the syntax of spoken languages and a keen understanding of the required elements of a natural language, Klima brought the tools of linguists to the study of ASL. As can be seen in other chapters in this book, this linguistic work continues today and promises many yet undiscovered treasures for the future.

Moreover, it was Bellugi’s training with Roger Brown at Harvard and her passion for issues related to language acquisition that kept her focused on signing children. By observing the apparent rule-based errors children made while acquiring ASL, she was able to show that ASL was not pantomime. Furthermore, she was able to convince other developmentalists that the study of ASL could provide important new insights into age-old questions. This was no small feat.

With Bellugi’s lead, ASL acquisition research has been guided by themes well-known to developmentalists: acquisition milestones and timetables, motherese, turn-taking, first word or sign, and so forth. Early questions about Mean Length of Utterance (MLU) in ASL in turn pointed out the need for a better understanding of ASL morphology, which in turn allowed for better study of acquisition. Such interdisciplinary dependency and gain has existed throughout their research over the years.

It is paramount to recognize an additional benefit of having their research programs guided by the questions of established fields such as developmental psychology and linguistics. First, as experiments were completed, their research was quickly accepted at a wide range of academic conferences, not just sign language or Deaf education conferences. This far-reaching exposure is responsible for bringing many experts of diverse fields to collaborate on sign language projects. Second, having their research guided by developmental and linguistic theories, rather than by traditional educational issues, helped to expand the types of data available regarding Deaf children.

Deaf Children of Deaf Parents

To me, the underlying truth discovered, studied, and scientifically explained by Bellugi and Klima’s study of ASL acquisition is that Deaf children born to Deaf parents (DD) are similar to hearing children born to hearing parents (HH) in a way that most Deaf children born to hearing parents (DH) are not. That is, if you are exposed to a language (signed or spoken) from birth that you can comprehend and produce, and if you can interact socially with your parents in an easy and natural manner, then normal development occurs. The early exposure of sign language available to Deaf children born to Deaf parents provides them with the tools necessary to play pretend games, tell creative stories, label objects in the world, question, and make themselves understood (refer back to the second scenario presented at the beginning of this chapter). Unfortunately, only about 10% of Deaf children have Deaf parents.

What of the 90% of Deaf children who have hearing parents? Their world is often one of delayed and impoverished language input and limited interaction with nonsigning parents and peers. In these children, one can see clearly the symbiotic relation between language, social, and cognitive development disrupted. Therefore, within a random group of Deaf children, there may exist children who are fluent in ASL with various levels of English skill, children with limited ASL and limited English skills, and children with only limited English skills. Therefore it is insufficient to say that “a group of Deaf children was tested.”

While at The Salk Institute, Jeff Bettger, Karen Emmorey, Stephen McCullough, Margaret Wilson, and others completed several studies exploring the effects of sign language exposure on cognitive development (see Emmorey, 1998, for a review). Within nonlinguistic cognitive domains, differentiating groups of children and adults by parental signing ability suggests that signers (Deaf and hearing) who have Deaf parents actually show enhanced or unique performance, relative to nonsigning peers, on tasks such as mental rotation (Emmorey, Kosslyn, & Bellugi, 1993), face discrimination (Bettger, Emmorey, McCullough, & Bellugi, 1997), and short-term memory (Wilson, Bettger, Niculae, & Klima, 1997). More recently, Remmel, Bettger, and Weinberg (1998) found a positive correlation between signing ability and performance on Theory of Mind tasks. When combined, these studies suggest that early knowledge of a visual-gestural language has a positive influence on cognitive development and may be a more important factor than is auditory deprivation per se (see Parasnis, Samar, Sathe, & Bettger, 1996 for relevant cross-cultural evidence).

It is interesting that subscribers of the “Medical Model” seem to ignore these data and focus on data collected by hearing researchers that suggest that Deaf children of hearing parents in oral or English-based signing classrooms are “impulsive and distractible” (Quittner, Smith, Osberger, Mitchell, & Katz, 1994) and show performance patterns similar to those of autistic children on Theory of Mind tasks (Peterson & Siegal, 1998). Their argument is that because most Deaf children do not have Deaf parents, whatever is learned about Deaf children of Deaf parents is not relevant. In essence, because society as a whole is hearing and uses spoken language, the appropriate goal, according to the Medical Model, is to make Deaf children of hearing parents join the hearing world as fully as possible. Those Deaf adults who eventually choose to self-identify with the Deaf world and use sign language as their primary language are seen as failures.

Please note that the logic of the Medical model makes Hearing adults, not Deaf adults, the proper role models for Deaf children. Partial English skills are considered more important than are fluent ASL skills. This logic also places the burden of effort on the child. That is, it is the Deaf child’s job to become literate in English, rather than the hearing parent’s job to learn sign language. This attitude is perplexing given recent studies showing that the Deaf children with the best signing skills also have the best English literacy skills (Hoffmeister, 1996; Padden, 1996; Strong & Prinz, 1997).

Current Deaf Education

Deaf education is extremely heterogeneous around the world. Many countries have adopted an exclusive Oral approach, whereas other countries, such as Holland, provide early signing intervention for hearing parents of Deaf children. Within the United States, one can find the full range of possible pedagogical philosophies—Oral, Cued Speech, English-based signing, Total Communication, and A...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyrights
• Contents
• Preface
• Contributors
• I: Reminiscences
• II: Historical and Comparative Analyses of Sign Languages
• III: Language in the Visual-Spatial Modality
• IV: Linguistic Analysis of Sign Languages
• V: Language Acquisition
• VI: The Neural Organization of Sign Language
• Author Index
• Subject Index