9-10 October 2015
Gallaudet University, Washington, D.C.
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Abstract Details
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10/10/2015 |
12:15 PM - 1:15 PM
| Andrew Foster Auditorium
All deaf children should be taught a sign language.
Language is a biological cognitive faculty that needs appropriate nourishment within the window of opportunity in order to develop properly. That window is determined by changing brain plasticity, where we used to believe that age was five, but more recent research places it closer to three. Hearing children are not at risk for linguistic deprivation because their ambient language is accessible to them (under ordinary circumstances). Deaf children, to the contrary, are at risk because, typically, their ambient language is spoken and inaccessible to them. Over 80% of deaf children in developed countries receive cochlear implants, often before one year of age. Most of those children do not access the ambient spoken language well enough to communicate with strangers. Many do not access it well enough to develop language, although they may glean nonlinguistic audiological benefits – such as being able to distinguish a fire alarm or the rumble of a truck from background noises. Success with a CI is variable and unpredictable. All deaf children should, therefore, be given a sign language from the moment their audiological status is determined. A sign language not only insures the child’s proper language development, but allows the basis for a range other cognitive abilities that rely on a solid language faculty, and allows the child intellectually and emotionally appropriate communication that will support a healthy identity and a happy life. Regardless of whether a child is implanted, a sign language supports the child’s literacy and can support the development of speech, promoting bilingualism, a beneficial situation in any case. The recommendation of a sign language means families need to learn to sign. But even poor signing at home can be enormously beneficial to the child, so long as the child has frequent and regular contact with good signing models outside the home.
- Changes in brain plasticity close the linguistic window of opportunity early
- A sign language ensures language access and all the cognitive faculties dependent upon a firm language faculty.
- CIs have varying success and that success is unpredictable.
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Gaurav Mathur (Primary Presenter,Author,Co-Author), Gallaudet University, gaurav.mathur@gallaudet.edu ;
His research interests center on the relationship between language modality (visual-manual vs. auditory-vocal) and language structure.
One line of research uses a paradigm of psycholinguistic experimental tasks to examine how the phonological properties of a signed language, e.g. handshape, location and movement, affect the online perception of a sign by native signers, late signers, and non-signers. Conversely, the paradigm reveals in part those properties that appear in the phonological structure of a sign.
A second line of research, carried out in collaboration with Dr. Christian Rathmann at the University of Hamburg, draws on a cross-linguistic comparison of several signed languages with respect to their morphology, with the aim of uncovering modality-specific and modality-neutral structural properties. To date, most of the research has concentrated on verb agreement in a number of sign languages. More recently, this line of research has been extended to the domain of classifier constructions.
He is also interested in the development of metalinguistic skills in a signed language and how it pertains to the development of reading skills in a written language.
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ASHA DISCLOSURE:
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No relevant financial relationship exist.
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Tom Humphries (Author,Co-Author), University of California at San Diego, thumphri@gmail.com ;
Tom Humphries is Associate Prof. of Education at the University of California at San Diego. His Ph.D. is in Cross Cultural Communication and Language Learning from Union Graduate School. A focus of his work has been on how “taking culture” among Deaf people helps us understand the circulation of culture in communities and especially the rapid acceleration of consciousness change. Culture has been “on its way somewhere” among Deaf people for 30 years. Tracing the movement of the discourse of culture in places like the Deaf media, in everyday talk, and in other kinds of texts allows us to see how Deaf people imagine their community and how to understand what is being communicated when they engage in such discourse. He is also focused on how a global discourse of culture among Deaf people has contributed to the reorganization of local educational practice for deaf children. He is fascinated with how
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Poorna Kushalnagar (Co-Presenter,Author,Co-Author), Chester L. Carston Center for Imaging Science, poorna.kushalnagar@mail.rit.edu;
Poorna Kushalnagar is Associate Research Professor at the Chester F. Carlson Center for Imaging Science at Rochester Institute of Technology. She has a B.A. in Psychology from Gallaudet University, an M.A. in Clinical Psychology with a Neuropsychology focus from the University of Houston, and a Ph.D. in Developmental Psychology with a Cognitive Neuroscience focus from the University of Houston. While at Houston, she conducted studies on bilingualism and attention at the Laboratory of Neural Bases on Bilingualism. Following completion of her Ph.D., she was awarded a two-year Research Supplement to Promote Diversity in Health-Related Research and Pediatric Research Loan Repayment Award from the National Institute of Health to support her postdoctoral training at the University of Washington. She continues to collaborate as a deaf research consultant for the head camera project in the Cognitive Development Lab at UH, focusing on early bilingualism and attentional learning.
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No relevant financial relationship exist.
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Donna Jo Napoli (POC,Co-Presenter,Author,Co-Author), Swarthmore College, donnajonapoli@gmail.com;
Dr. Napoli has been teaching linguistics since 1973. She has a B.A. in mathematics and a Ph.D. in Romance Languages & Literatures from Harvard University, and spent a year as a postdoctoral fellow at MIT in Linguistics. She has published dozens of articles and many books in linguistics. She is part of a team that work to protect the language rights of deaf children. She presently teaches at Swarthmore College.
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Carol Padden (Author,Co-Author), University of California at San Diego, cpadden@ucsd.edu;
Carol Padden is Dean of the Division of Social Sciences and Prof. of Communication at the University of California at San Diego. She is a recipient of the MacArthur Fellowship (in 2010). Her B.A. (Georgetown University) and Ph.D. (UCSD) are both in Linguistics. Padden’s main areas of research are language emergence, sign language structure, and cultural life in deaf communities. She plays a central role in promoting research on sign languages around the world and in shaping policy and practices that promote the full participation of deaf people in society.
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Christian Rathmann (Author,Co-Author), University of Hamburg, christian.rathmann@sign-lang.uni-hamburg.de ;
Christian Rathmann is University Professor for Sign Languages and Sign Interpreting at the University of Hamburg in Germany. He is Head of the Institute for German Sign Language and Communication of the Deaf there. His Ph.D. is in Linguistics from the University of Texas at Austin. His research is in Deaf Studies, language acquisition and learning (L1 and L2), sign interpreting, and many areas of sign language analysis, including agreement, aspect, and text structure.
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Scott Smith (Author,Co-Author), University of Rochester Medical Center School of Medicine and Dentistry, Scott_Smith@urmc.rochester.edu;
Dr. Scott Smith, an assistant professor in the Department of Community and Preventive Medicine at the University of Rochester Medical Center in Rochester, N.Y., was diagnosed profoundly deaf at age 1 in Winston-Salem, N.C., where he had supportive primary and high school education, which included sign language interpreters. That support continued when he majored in biochemistry at East Carolina University in Greenville, N.C. There, he received his M.D. at the university’s Brody School of Medicine. He began a general pediatric residency at the Children’s Hospital at Eastern North Carolina University. Following that he did a fellowship in general academic pediatrics at Massachusetts General Hospital for Children in Boston. While there, he earned a master’s degree in Public Health at Harvard University and did a second clinical fellowship on the Floating Hospital for Children, part of Tufts Medical Center. In 2004, Smith came to Rochester as an attending pediatrician specializing in pediatric behavior at Rochester General Hospital.
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