Christian Rathmann

Should All Deaf Children Learn Sign Language

Every year, 10 000 infants are born in the United States with sensorineural deafness. Deaf children of hearing (and nonsigning) parents are unique among all children in the world in that they cannot easily or naturally learn the language that their parents speak. These parents face tough choices. Should they seek a cochlear implant for their child? If so, should they also learn to sign? As pediatricians, we need to help parents understand the risks and benefits of different approaches to parent–child communication when the child is deaf.

Word recognition in deaf readers: Cross-language activation of German Sign Language and German

This study addressed visual word recognition in deaf bilinguals who are proficient in German Sign Language (DGS) and German. The study specifically investigated whether DGS signs are activated during a monolingual German word recognition task despite the lack of similarity in German orthographic representations and DGS phonological representations. Deaf DGS-German bilinguals saw pairs of German words and decided whether the words were semantically related. Half of the experimental items had phonologically related translation equivalents in DGS. Participants were slower to reject semantically unrelated word pairs when the translation equivalents were phonologically related in DGS than when the DGS translations were phonologically unrelated. However, this was not the case in Turkish-German hearing bilinguals who do not have sign language knowledge. The results indicate that lexical representations are associated cross-linguistically in the bilingual lexicon irrespective of their orthographic or phonological form. Implications of these results for reading development in deaf German bilinguals are discussed.

The right to language.

We argue for the existence of a state constitutional legal right to language. Our purpose here is to develop a legal framework for protecting the civil rights of the deaf child, with the ultimate goal of calling for legislation that requires all levels of government to fund programs for deaf children and their families to learn a fully accessible language: a sign language.

The Importance of Early Sign Language Acquisition for Deaf Readers

Researchers have used various theories to explain deaf individuals’ reading skills, including the dual route reading theory, the orthographic depth theory, and the early language access theory. This study tested 4 groups of children—hearing with dyslexia, hearing without dyslexia, deaf early signers, and deaf late signers (N = 857)—from 4 countries using both shallow and deep orthographies (American English, Hebrew, German, and Turkish) to evaluate which of these theories best describes variances in deaf childrens reading development. Results showed that deaf participants were unlike participants with dyslexia, suggesting that they do not have a phonological processing deficit. Rather, the early language access theory more readily explained the similarities between hearing and deaf early signer participants, stressing the importance of early access to visual language.

Language Needs of Deaf and Hard- of-Hearing Infants and Children: Information for Spiritual Leaders and Communities

Leaders of spiritual communities should support a family welcoming a deaf or hard-of-hearing child in such a way that the entire community offers the child genuine inclusion. The ideal situation for protecting mental, emotional, and spiritual well-being is to raise the child bilingually. The community leader can guide as the community participates in nourishing the child by providing information and suggestions for action. The community needs to understand deafness as primarily a condition of gaining a culture and language rather than sensory loss, so that family and others evolve from grieving the loss of their expectations of what their childs life might be like to looking forward with hope to the unique contributions that child can bring to the world.

Avoiding Linguistic Neglect Of Deaf Children

Deaf children who are not provided with a sign language early in their development are at risk of linguistic deprivation; they may never be fluent in any language, and they may have deficits in cognitive activities that rely on a firm foundation in a first language. These children are socially and emotionally isolated. Deafness makes a child vulnerable to abuse, and linguistic deprivation compounds the abuse because the child is less able to report it. Parents rely on professionals as guides in making responsible choices in raising and educating their deaf children. But lack of expertise on language acquisition and overreliance on access to speech often result in professionals not recommending that the child be taught a sign language or, worse, that the child be denied sign language. We recommend action that those in the social welfare services can implement immediately to help protect the health of deaf children.

Language Choices for Deaf Infants Advice for Parents Regarding Sign Languages

The principle of respect for autonomy in modern medical ethics leads doctors to avoid persuasion and aim for neutrality when discussing language choices regarding deaf infants. However, at times persuasion to overcome biases is necessary and ethically mandatory. Many parents and health professionals have faith in the ability of cochlear implants (CIs) to allow deaf children to “hear” and achieve normal language and speech development. While it is good to encourage parents’ hope for their children’s future, to avoid bias, medical professionals must acknowledge the reality that CIs do not replace normal hearing. As of 2006, 80% of deaf infants in Northern Europe were receiving CIs, and as of December 2010, roughly 40% worldwide. Parents need to know that CI may not guarantee their child’s language acquisition. While a CI is usually given only to a child who will not benefit from a hearing aid, it is important to recognize that CIs are not “super hearing aids”; even hospitals that perform CI surgery make statements such as: “For most patients, a cochlear implant will not work as well as a hearing aid” 5 and studies support that statement. That’s because a hearing aid (HA) simply amplifies sound, whereas with CIs sound is transformed into electrical impulses delivered directly to the cochlear nerve. The CI-child must undergo long-term extensive training to interpret those electrical impulses. Unpredictable individual variation in outcomes is pervasive even with great effort and dedication from caregivers and the deaf child; some deaf children receive little to no auditory benefit from CIs in acquiring language. The neuronal plasticity of the brain with respect to language acquisition is maximal before the age of 3 years; if a child is not fluent in a language by the age of 5 years, that child may never achieve full fluency in any language. At the same time during this critical period, the increase in synaptic density occurs earlier and more rapidly in the occipital cortex than in the auditory; so the deaf infant’s brain is primed for visual input. Sign languages provide this visual input; access to signing can ensure language acquisition for deaf children and avoid cognitive deficits associated with linguistic deprivation. The deaf child who signs well does better academically than the deaf child who doesn’t, regardless of all other factors, and most attribute this to the fact that the signing deaf child is not at a linguistic disadvantage. Given evidence such as this, a recent panel of specialists concluded that all children born deaf should be taught a sign language immediately. We are a team of specialists in education studies, linguistics, pediatric medicine, and developmental psychology; our work focuses on deaf individuals. In order to help the practicing pediatrician, we offer here responses to common family questions. Our responses respect families’ autonomy while bearing in mind the difficulty that many parents have coming to terms with children who are different. The evidence-based information related to deaf children’s language and speech development here should help enable parents to better be involved in making the relevant decisions. Our intention is for the advice below to go directly to parents or indirectly via those involved in the educating of deaf children.

Discourses of prejudice in the professions: the case of sign languages

There is no evidence that learning a natural human language is cognitively harmful to children. To the contrary, multilingualism has been argued to be beneficial to all. Nevertheless, many professionals advise the parents of deaf children that their children should not learn a sign language during their early years, despite strong evidence across many research disciplines that sign languages are natural human languages. Their recommendations are based on a combination of misperceptions about (1) the difficulty of learning a sign language, (2) the effects of bilingualism, and particularly bimodalism, (3) the bona fide status of languages that lack a written form, (4) the effects of a sign language on acquiring literacy, (5) the ability of technologies to address the needs of deaf children and (6) the effects that use of a sign language will have on family cohesion. We expose these misperceptions as based in prejudice and urge institutions involved in educating professionals concerned with the healthcare, raising and educating of deaf children to include appropriate information about first language acquisition and the importance of a sign language for deaf children. We further urge such professionals to advise the parents of deaf children properly, which means to strongly advise the introduction of a sign language as soon as hearing loss is detected.

Cochlear Implants and the Right to Language: Ethical Considerations, the Ideal Situation, and Practical Measures Toward Reaching the Ideal

Cochlear implants (CIs) in small children who do not yet have a firm footing in first language acquisition are an on-going experiment with human subjects, in the sense that the risks involved have not been properly identified, much less assessed, due to the failure to focus on the biology of language and its role in first language acquisition. Too often, the developmental cognitive milestones of the deaf child and the right to language are not considered, and we risk contributing to cases of linguistic deprivation with all the ensuing consequences. We propose an immediate remedy: to teach deaf children a sign language, along with training in speech and speech-reading. For many families, such as those that live far from a Deaf community, as in a rural situation, this presents practical problems, which we address.

A Comparison of the Letter-Processing Skills of Hearing and Deaf Readers: Evidence From Five Orthographies

This study was designed to examine the letter-processing skills of prelingually deaf and hearing students recruited from five different orthographic backgrounds (Hebrew, Arabic, English, German, and Turkish). Participants were 128 hearing and 133 deaf 6th-7th graders. They were tested with a same/different paradigm that assessed their ability to process letters under perceptual and conceptual conditions. Findings suggest that the letter-processing skills of deaf readers from some orthographic backgrounds may be underdeveloped in comparison to hearing counterparts. The finding that such letter-processing deficits were restricted to readers of some but not all of the tested orthographies warrants the conclusion that prelingual deafness, per se, does not impede the development of effective letter processing. Evidence for this study is discussed with reference to potential orthography-inherent and educational factors that may explain the existence of letter-processing deficits found in some of the prelingually deaf readers examined in this study.