Benefits of augmentative signs in word learning: Evidence from children who are deaf/hard of hearing and children with specific language impairment.
Signs boost receptive word learning only for deaf or hard-of-hearing preschoolers, not for children with SLI or typical hearing.
01Research in Context
What this study did
Lian and team taught made-up words to three groups of preschoolers.
One group was deaf or hard-of-hearing. Another had specific language impairment. The last group was typically developing.
Each child saw a new spoken word. Half the time the teacher also showed a simple sign. The researchers then checked who learned the word.
What they found
Only the deaf and hard-of-hearing children learned more words when the sign was added.
Children with language impairment and typically developing children learned the same number of words with or without the sign.
In short, the sign boost was limited to kids who already understood signs.
How this fits with other research
Burgess et al. (1986) saw the same pattern years earlier. They found that children first had to understand the spoken word before they could quickly learn its sign.
Gevarter et al. (2013) reviewed many AAC studies. They showed that teaching tricks like errorless learning speed up picture exchange, but simply adding a new symbol usually does not.
Together these papers tell a clear story: extra visual cues help only when the child already knows the cue’s meaning.
Why it matters
If you work with deaf or hard-of-hearing preschoolers, pair new spoken words with signs. You will likely see faster receptive vocabulary growth.
For children with language impairment or typical hearing, save your time. Focus on other evidence-based strategies instead of adding signs to every new word.
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02At a glance
03Original abstract
BACKGROUND: Augmentative signs may facilitate word learning in children with vocabulary difficulties, for example, children who are Deaf/Hard of Hearing (DHH) and children with Specific Language Impairment (SLI). Despite the fact that augmentative signs may aid second language learning in populations with a typical language development, empirical evidence in favor of this claim is lacking. AIMS: We aim to investigate whether augmentative signs facilitate word learning for DHH children, children with SLI, and typically developing (TD) children. METHODS AND PROCEDURES: Whereas previous studies taught children new labels for familiar objects, the present study taught new labels for new objects. In our word learning experiment children were presented with pictures of imaginary creatures and pseudo words. Half of the words were accompanied by an augmentative pseudo sign. The children were tested for their receptive word knowledge. OUTCOMES AND RESULTS: The DHH children benefitted significantly from augmentative signs, but the children with SLI and TD age-matched peers did not score significantly different on words from either the sign or no-sign condition. CONCLUSIONS AND IMPLICATIONS: These results suggest that using Sign-Supported speech in classrooms of bimodal bilingual DHH children may support their spoken language development. The difference between earlier research findings and the present results may be caused by a difference in methodology.
Research in developmental disabilities, 2016 · doi:10.1016/j.ridd.2016.09.015