2024 Early Hearing Detection & Intervention Conference
March 17-19, 2024 • Denver, CO
3/18/2024 | 1:55 PM - 2:20 PM | Family Bimodal Bilingual Language Development: Longitudinal Study of Families Learning ASL | Granite A-C
Family Bimodal Bilingual Language Development: Longitudinal Study of Families Learning ASL
Some parents of deaf or hard of hearing (DHH) children choose to incorporate a natural sign language such as ASL into their home life. These parents embark on an unusual journey of learning a second language in a new modality, with the goal of that language becoming one of their child's first languages. Our project takes the unique tack of documenting both children's and parents' language acquisition over the course of a year in their bimodal bilingual journeys.
We pair families with a deaf ASL specialist who meets with them regularly over Zoom to provide ASL support that is tailored to each family's needs. Families also complete a battery of tasks measuring development in ASL, English, and cognitive tasks. This approach provides a highly detailed picture of how each family learned and used ASL and English in their family environment over the course of one year. Here we present case studies from three families with DHH children between 2-4 years old whose parents varied widely in their ASL proficiency at the start of our study. All three children continued to learn and use ASL with their parents throughout the course of the project year, displaying some common patterns. For instance, children's ASL vocabulary scores improved substantially over the year, as did their English vocabulary. Importantly, this improvement occurred for all children, regardless of their mother's ASL vocabulary. We will present results from a range of linguistic domains.
Overall, we see positive ASL growth in all three families, despite variations in parents' ASL proficiency. Adopting a natural sign language for family use did not interfere with children’s English development, for families with higher or more moderate levels of ASL proficiency. While each family’s language acquisition path is unique, bimodal bilingualism is an achievable goal for hearing families with DHH children.
- List at least three articles discussing the use of bimodal bilingualism with DHH children.
- Discuss language results from year-long case studies with three hearing parents learning to sign with their toddlers.
- Give examples of three ways the bimodal bilingual approach can impact families learning ASL.
Presentation:
3478265_16374DianeLillo-Martin.pdf
Handouts:
Handout is not Available
Transcripts:
3478265_16374DianeLillo-Martin.docx
Presenters/Authors
Diane Lillo-Martin
(Primary Presenter), University of Connecticut, diane.lillo-martin@uconn.edu;
Diane Lillo-Martin is a Board of Trustees Distinguished Professor of Linguistics at the University of Connecticut. Her main research interest is to better understand the human language faculty. Primarily she examines this by studying the structure and acquisition of American Sign Language, and by looking at the process of language acquisition across different languages. See her site for the Sign Linguistics and Language Acquisition lab (http://slla.lab.uconn.edu/) for more information.
ASHA DISCLOSURE:
Financial -
• Receives Salary,Grants for Employment from National Institutes of Health.
Nonfinancial -
No relevant nonfinancial relationship exists.
AAA DISCLOSURE:
Financial -
Financial relationship with National Institutes of Health.
Nature: Research grant supporting this project.
Nonfinancial -
No relevant nonfinancial relationship exists.
Elaine Gale
(Co-Presenter), Hunter College, CUNY, egale@hunter.cuny.edu;
Elaine Gale is an associate professor and program leader of the deaf and hard of hearing teacher preparation program at Hunter College, City University of New York (CUNY). She is currently the chair of the Deaf Leadership International Alliance (DLIA), an organization established to advocate deaf adults collaborating with professionals and connecting with young deaf children and their families. Her research experiences include joint attention, theory of mind, and sign language development. At present, she is the Lead Investigator for the Hunter College consortium on a research project titled Family ASL: Bimodal Bilingual Acquisition by Deaf Children of Hearing Parents supported by the National Institute on Deafness and other Communication Disorders (NIDCD) of the National Institutes of Health (NIH).
ASHA DISCLOSURE:
Financial -
• Receives Grants for Other activities from PI.
Nonfinancial -
No relevant nonfinancial relationship exists.
AAA DISCLOSURE:
Financial -
Financial relationship with .
Nature: National Institute on Deafness and Other
Communication Disorders (NIDCD) of the National Institutes of Health under award number 1R01DC016901.
Nonfinancial -
No relevant nonfinancial relationship exists.
Deborah Chen Pichler
(Co-Presenter), Gallaudet University, deborah.pichler@gallaudet.edu;
Deborah Chen Pichler is Professor of Linguistics at Gallaudet University in Washington, DC. Her research focuses on the acquisition of ASL by Deaf children, bimodal bilingual acquisition of ASL and English by Coda children and Deaf children with cochlear implants from Deaf families. She also studies L2 acquisition of ASL by hearing and Deaf adults, particularly hearing parents of deaf and hard of hearing children.
ASHA DISCLOSURE:
Financial -
• Receives Salary for Other activities from NIH grant "Bimodal Bilingual Development by Deaf Children with Hearing Parents".
Nonfinancial -
No relevant nonfinancial relationship exists.
AAA DISCLOSURE:
Financial -
Financial relationship with Gallaudet University.
Nature: I receive one month summer salary from this research grant .
Nonfinancial -
No relevant nonfinancial relationship exists.
Patrice Creamer
(Co-Presenter), Hunter College, pcreamer20s@huntersoe.org;
Patrice Creamer is currently an ASL Specialist for the Hunter College consortium on a research project titled Family ASL: Bimodal Bilingual Acquisition by Deaf Children of Hearing Parents. The research project is supported by the National Institute on Deafness and other Communication Disorders (NIDCD) of the National Institutes of Health (NIH).
ASHA DISCLOSURE:
Financial -
No relevant financial relationship exists.
Nonfinancial -
No relevant nonfinancial relationship exists.
AAA DISCLOSURE:
Financial -
Financial relationship with .
Nature: National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders (NIDCD) of the National Institutes of Health under award number 1R01DC016901
.
Nonfinancial -
No relevant nonfinancial relationship exists.