User:Adrisheh/sandbox

Working with Brooke Hayman

Working on https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Language_acquisition#Prelingual_deafness

Talk about how access to language is important and expand more on the idea from this sentence from the article: "Humans are biologically equipped for language, which is not limited to spoken language only" and talk about how in some circumstances CI's don't work so at that point it is critical that signed language is implemented for access to language

Critical period articles

https://academic.oup.com/eltj/article/63/2/170/441108

http://www.acfos.org/publication/ourarticles/pdf/acfos1/mayberry.pdf

downloaded journal pdf file - Rachel Mayberry (UCSD. Discusses what sign language reveals about the critical period theory)

Will add more research-based information about cochlear implants and their effectiveness in terms of their function. Will also propose additional culturally sensitive perspectives about cochlear implants and how they are received by the Deaf community.

[copied from Language acquisition] to edit

Prelingual deafness is defined as hearing loss that occurred at birth or before an individual has learned to speak. In the United States, 2 to 3 out of every 1000 children are born deaf or hard of hearing. Even though it might be presumed that deaf children acquire language in different ways since they are not receiving the same auditory input as hearing children, many research findings indicate that deaf children acquire language in the same way that hearing children do and when given the proper language input, understand and express language just as well as their hearing peers. Babies who learn sign language produce signs or gestures that are more regular and more frequent than hearing babies acquiring spoken language. Just as hearing babies babble, deaf babies acquiring sign language will babble with their hands, otherwise known as manual babbling. Therefore, as many studies have shown, language acquisition by deaf children parallel the language acquisition of a spoken language by hearing children because humans are biologically equipped for language regardless of the modality.

Signed Language Acquisition

Deaf children's visual-manual language acquisition not only parallel spoken language acquisition but by the age of 30 months, most deaf children that were exposed to a visual language had a more advanced grasp with subject-pronoun copy rules than hearing children. Their vocabulary bank at the ages of 12-17 months exceed that of a hearing child's, though it does even out when they reach the two-word stage. The use of space for absent referents and the more complex handshapes in some signs prove to be difficult for children between 5-9 years of age because of motor development and the complexity of remembering the spacial use. Despite certain myths about deaf children signing, their acquisition of a signed language not only develops normally, it exceeds that of a hearing child's at certain points.

Cochlear Implants

Other options besides sign language for kids with prelingual deafness include the use hearing aids to strengthen remaining sensory cells or cochlear implants to stimulate the hearing nerve directly. Cochlear Implants are hearing devices that are placed behind the ear and contain a receiver and electrodes which are placed under the skin and inside the cochlea. Despite these developments, there is still a risk that prelingually deaf children are may not develop good speech and speech reception skills. Although cochlear implants produce sounds, they are unlike typical hearing and deaf and hard of hearing people must undergo intensive therapy in order to learn how to interpret these sounds. They must also learn how to speak given the range of hearing they may or may not have. However, deaf children of deaf parents tend to do better with language, even though they are isolated from sound and speech because their language uses a different mode of communication that is accessible to them; the visual modality of language.

Although cochlear implants were initially approved for adults, now there is pressure to implant children early in order to maximize auditory skills for mainstream learning which in turn has created controversy around the topic. Due to recent advances in technology, cochlear implants allow some deaf people to acquire some sense of hearing. There are interior and exposed exterior components that are surgically implanted. Those who receive cochlear implants earlier on in life show more improvement on speech comprehension and language. Spoken language development does vary widely for those with cochlear implants though due to a number of different factors including: age at implantation, frequency, quality and type of speech training. Some evidence suggests that speech processing occurs at a more rapid pace in some prelingually deaf children with cochlear implants than those with traditional hearing aids. However, cochlear implants may not always work.

Research shows that people develop better language with a cochlear implant when they have a solid first language to rely on to understand the second language they would be learning. In the case of prelingually deaf children with cochlear implants, a signed language, like American Sign Language would be an accessible language for them to learn to help support the use of the cochlear implant as they learn a spoken language as their L2. Without a solid, accessible first language, these children run the risk of language deprivation, especially in the case that a cochlear implant fails to work. They would have no access to sound, meaning no access to the spoken language they are supposed to be learning. If a signed language was not a strong language for them to use and neither was a spoken language, they now have no access to any language and run the risk of missing their Critical period.

Copied from the lead paragraph of Language acquisition to edit and add more about prelingual deafness

Language acquisition is the process by which humans acquire the capacity to perceive and comprehend language, as well as to produce and use words and sentences to communicate. Language acquisition is one of the quintessential human traits, because non-humans do not communicate by using language. Language acquisition usually refers to first-language acquisition, which studies infants' acquisition of their native language whether that be spoken language or signed language as a result of Prelingual Deafness. This is distinguished from second-language acquisition, which deals with the acquisition (in both children and adults) of additional languages. In addition to speech, reading and writing a language with an entirely different script compounds the complexities of true foreign language literacy.