Language acquisition by deaf children

In the United States, one in a thousand children is born profoundly deaf. Despite their inability to hear at birth, communication and language acquisition are fundamental to their general cognitive development and their engagement with their surroundings. While most deaf children in the developed world receive hearing aids and/or cochlear implants, and use spoken language as their primary mode of communication, there are Deaf communities around the world that use signed languages. In 1957, Noam Chomsky, the pioneer of the nativist theory of language acquisition, claimed that all humans are born with an innate capacity for language, in other words, a language acquisition device. The fact that deaf children are able to communicate supports his view for an innate capability to communicate.

Some deaf children lag in language development and subsequently struggle in school, but this may not be solely attributable to deafness. Deaf children born to deaf parents acquire sign language just as quickly and with as much effort as hearing children acquire spoken language. Although they may communicate less frequently than their hearing counterparts, deaf mothers’ language is made more accessible and thereby more salient to their children.

More than 90% of deaf children are born to hearing parents. The majority of these children receive hearing aids and/or cochlear implants, and are taught to listen and to use spoken language using these devices.

Language acquisition strategies for signing deaf children are different than those appropriate for hearing children. For parents with deaf children who do not use amplification (hearing aids or cochlear implants), joint attention (an important component to language development) can be problematic. Hearing children can watch their environment and listen to an adult comment on it. However, children who do not hear have to switch their visual attention back and forth between stimuli. Since observation and language occur sequentially rather than simultaneously for deaf children, the association is less obvious, and the necessary cognitive processing to make these connections are more difficult. To lessen these demands, a parent can use certain strategies to make language more accessible to their deaf children. Strategies for nonverbal communication include using facial expressions and body language to show emotion and reinforce the child's attention to their caregiver. To attract and direct a deaf child's attention, caregivers can break his line of gaze using hand and body movements, touch, and pointing to allow language input. In order to make language salient, parents should use short, simple sentences so that the child's attention doesn’t have to be divided for too long. Finally, to reduce the need for divided attention, a caregiver can position themselves and objects within the child's visual field so that language and the object can be seen at the same time.

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