Journal of Deaf Studies and Deaf Education Advance Access originally published online on July 6, 2005
The Journal of Deaf Studies and Deaf Education 2005 10(4):321-329; doi:10.1093/deafed/eni035
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Early Manual Communication in Relation to the Deaf Child's Intellectual, Social, and Communicative Functioning
University of California, Berkeley
The basic impoverishment of deafness is not lack of hearing but lack of language. To illustrate this, we have only to compare a 4-year-old hearing child, with a working vocabulary of between 2,000 and 3,000 words, to a child of the same age, profoundly deaf since infancy, who may have only a few words at his command. Even more important than vocabulary level, however, is the child's ability to use his language for expressing ideas, needs, and feelings. By the age of 4 years, the hearing child in all cultures has already grasped the rules of grammar syntax that enable him or her to combine words in meaningful ways.
1 In the New York State study, almost half of the 493 deaf respondents stated that they used "mainly signs" for communicating, whereas another 18% reported the "equal use of speech and signs." This compares to 29% who use "mainly speech" (Rainer et al., 1963, computed from Table 6, p. 119). Of 71 deaf parents of deaf children responding to the Stuckless and Birch survey, only 5 stated that they did not use the language of signs with their deaf child. Sixty-four percent stated that they had used the language of signs with the child when he was a baby (Stuckless & Birch, 1966, p. 458). 2 The aim of matching is to control or "hold constant" as many variables as possible other than the experimental variables. An attempt is made to make the two groups (i.e., those with deaf parents and those with hearing parents) as nearly alike as possible. A random group of deaf children of hearing parents would, in all probability, not have the functional potential equal to that of the children with deaf parents because of the higher probability of additional neurological complications. In order to test the effect of parents' hearing status on the child's performance, we must start with groups that are "equivalent" in important ways. The most precise method of achieving this goal is by means of the matched-pair design. Correspondence should be addressed to Kathyrn P. Meadow-Orlans (e-mail: kayorlans{at}comcast.net).