User:JoeNavek/sandbox

Hi Kevan! Hopefully, my comments will show up. Reading through the article I noticed that it frequently brings up cochlear implants; they are mentioned repeatedly throughout - even though there is a section with the heading 'cochlear implants'- but the information seems unbalanced. There are also assumptions made about 'other domains of development' and language learning that need more fleshing out and do not have enough sources to support the claims like in the section about social-emotional development and the claim about "proper emotional development". [ Note: Keep this in mind when editing lead section in main article. ]The headings can be redone to be a little more descriptive, and maybe some sections can be combined so that they are more clear, for example, some of the factual content (with appropriate citations) under the header of 'role of input and the environment' could be helpful in setting up the article if it was used in the first intro paragraph. Happy editing! Versa1 (talk ) 04:42, 26 September 2019 (UTC)~

Dear JoeNavek,

I really hope my writing does not ruin your sandbox!

Anyway, I particularly like your adding specific survey regarding cochlear implants. When I saw this, I wonder how deaf children have implanted cochlear and you did solve my question. There are a couple of suggestions that I think it might be helpful for you to edit this article. The bold sentences are original ones from this article and I suggested how to edit that part under each bold sentence.

-Hyeonah

1. The early experience of deaf children, however, is highly variable and frequently atypical from a language acquisition perspective.

- This sentence is at odds with the first sentence in the lead section. [Note: They are. ]

2. While cochlear implants provide auditory stimulation, not all children succeed at acquiring spoken language completely.[10] Children who received cochlear implants before twelve months old were found to be significantly more likely to perform at age-level standards for spoken language than children who received implants later.[13][14]

- The connection between those two sentences is not natural. I think "While cochlear implants provide auditory stimulation, not all children succeed at acquiring spoken language completely. This is because an age of a deaf child can play an important role in the success of cochlear implants. Specifically, children who received cochlear implants before twelve months old were found to be significantly more likely to perform at age-level standards for spoken language than children who received implants later."

3. Deaf children born to deaf parents

About three percent of deaf children are born to two deaf parents, with one percent born to one hearing and one deaf parent.[9]:153, 155

Deaf children born to hearing parents

About 96% of deaf children are born to hearing parents.[9]:153, 155 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.[citation needed]

- Does this piece of information should be divided into different paragraphs in the "Role of input and the environment"?

'''4. ASL employs signs made by moving one's hands along with one's facial expressions and body language. Some studies indicate that if a deaf child learns sign language, he or she will be less likely to learn spoken languages because they will lose motivation.[citation needed] However, Humphries insists that there is no evidence for this.'''

- It would be better why Humphries is against with the side effects of sign language on spoken languages.

'''5. According to Goldin-Meadow, reading requires two essential abilities: familiarity with a language and understanding the mapping between that language and the written word. However, reading is possible if deaf children learn ASL. Once they have acquired ASL, deaf children learn how to map between sign language and print so that they can learn English. Several techniques are used to help bridge the gap between ASL and spoken language or the "translation process" such as sandwiching and chaining.'''

- Need to cite Goldlin-Meadow's argument

Language acquisition by deaf children parallels the development of any children acquiring spoken language as long as there is full access to language from birth.

Despite limited access to spoken language, communication and language exposure are fundamental to deaf infants' general cognitive development and their engagement with their surroundings. While a growing number of deaf children in the developed world receive hearing aids and/or cochlear implants to support spoken language acquisition there are deaf communities around the world that use signed languages. Infants born to signing parents, or exposed immersively to fluent sign language models at a young age, generally acquire sign language natively.

Deaf Children's Acquisition of Language
Human languages are either spoken or signed and infants around the world are primed to acquire information about the language in their environment with remarkable ease regardless of whether their native language assumes the vocal (spoken language) or the gestural mode (signed language).

Naturally, deaf children who are exposed to an established sign language from birth learn that language in the same manner as any other hearing child acquiring a spoken language. Signed languages like ASL (American Sign Language) are, however, acquired by signers of varying age and are atypical from a language acquisition perspective. For example, only 5-10% of deaf children are born to deaf  signing parents in the United States. The remaining 90-95% of the signing community are deaf children born to hearing, non-signing parents/families who usually lack knowledge of signed languages and may discourage the use of a signed language in favor of spoken English.

These circumstances give rise to certain unique features of sign language acquisition not usually observed in spoken language acquisition. Due to the visual/manual modality these differences can help to distinguish between universal aspects of language acquisition and aspects that may be affected by early language experience.

Acquisition of Spoken Language
Around 90-95% of deaf children are born to hearing parents and often lacked direct exposure full conversational language in either the vocal or gestural modality. 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.

The very earliest linguistic tasks facing newborns are perceptual. Babies need to determine what basic linguistic elements are used in their native language to create words (their phonetic inventory). They also need to determine how to segment the continuous stream of language input into phrases and eventually words. From birth, they have an attraction to patterned linguistic input, which is evident whether the input is spoken or signed. They use their sensitive perceptual skills to acquire information about the structure of their native language, particularly prosodic and phonological features.

Cochlear implants
A cochlear implant is placed surgically inside the cochlea, which is the part of the inner ear that converts sound to neural signals. There is much debate regarding the linguistic conditions under which deaf children acquire spoken language via cochlear implantation. Some studies have concluded that long-term use of sign language impedes the development of spoken language and reading ability in deaf and hard of hearing children, and that using sign language is not at all advantageous, and can be detrimental to language development. However, studies have found that sign language exposure actually facilitates the development of spoken language of deaf children of deaf parents who had exposure to sign language from birth. These children outperformed their deaf peers who were born to hearing parents following cochlear implantation.

New parents with a deaf infant are faced with a range of options for how to interact with their newborn, and may try several methods that include different amounts of sign language, oral/auditory language training, and communicative codes invented to facilitate acquisition of spoken language. In addition, parents may decide to use cochlear implants or hearing aids with their infants. According to one US-based study from 2008, approximately 55% of eligible deaf infants received cochlear implants. A study in Switzerland found that 80% of deaf infants were given cochlear implants as of 2006 and the numbers have been steadily increasing. While cochlear implants provide auditory stimulation, not all children succeed at acquiring spoken language completely. Children who received cochlear implants before twelve months old were found to be significantly more likely to perform at age-level standards for spoken language than children who received implants later.

Research also shows that deaf children who listen and speak to communicate, but do not use sign language have better communication outcomes and social well-being than Deaf children who use sign language.

Acquisition of Signed Language
Sign languages have natural prosodic patterns and infants are sensitive to these prosodic boundaries even if they have no specific experience with sign languages. 6-month-old hearing infants with no sign experience also preferentially attend to sign language stimuli over complex gesture, indicating that they are perceiving sign language as meaningful linguistic input.

Since infants attend to spoken and signed language in a similar manner, several researchers have concluded that much of language acquisition is universal, not tied to the modality of the language, and that sign languages are acquired and processed very similarly to spoken languages, given adequate exposure. At the same time, these and other researchers point out that there are many unknowns in terms of how a visual language might be processed differently than a spoken language, particularly given the unusual path of language transmission for most deaf infants.

Research shows that deaf parents with deaf infants are more successful than hearing parents at capturing moments of joint attention when signing, which are privileged language learning moments. Deaf mothers are more adept at ensuring that the infant is visually engaged prior to signing and use specific modifications to their signing, referred to as child-directed sign to gain and maintain their children's attention. Just as in child-directed speech (CDS), child-directed signing is characterized by slower production, exaggerated prosody, and repetition. Due to the unique demands of a visual language, child-directed signing also includes tactile strategies and relocation of language into the child's line of vision.

Around three percent of deaf children are born to two deaf parents, with one percent born to one hearing and one deaf parent.

Notes for improving above
Adding this section to the above:

"Home-sign" emerges from deaf children who are born to hearing parents and develop a series of meaningful gestures to communicate with immediate family members.

Other articles that could be linked to this one: Prelingual Deafness, Sensorineural Hearing Loss

Feedback
Hi, Joe!

I like the way you restructured the article. Now the organization seems more reasonable and much clearer to me. Here are some small suggestions:

1. In the paragraph Acquisition of Spoken Language, would it be better to cite some references (on early infants respond to linguistic stimuli) that we learned from 533. 2. The first sentence in the section Acquisition of Sign Language (‘Sign languages have natural prosodic patterns…’) might be confusing for non-linguists, as ‘prosodic’ is more typically related to properties of speech like tone, intonation, stress, etc. It might be helpful to specify what prosody of sign languages is in parentheses or perhaps give a wikipedia link to ‘sign language’.

3. The subsections 1.1 and 1.2 seems to provide only few information related to the topic and are kind of redundant (as some of data have been provided in the preceeding paragraph). Would it be better to move them to the beginning paragraph of this section (i.e.section 1)? [ Note: 'Had a similar idea, and am working on how to restructure Section 1.' ]

4. The section Late Learner might also be important for the issue of acquisition of deaf children. "Children who received cochlear implants before twelve months old were found to be significantly more likely to perform at age-level standards for spoken language than children who received implants later." I feel that it has something to do with critical period? Perhaps you can consider elaborating a bit on this. [ Note: 'critical period does need to be addressed, but unsure if I can look at that this semester. Include a note in Talk Page.' ]

I hope this helps. Best, Zhujialei (talk) 13:06, 26 September 2019 (UTC)

Hi Kevan! Hopefully, my comments will show up. Reading through the article I noticed that it frequently brings up cochlear implants; they are mentioned repeatedly throughout - even though there is a section with the heading 'cochlear implants'- but the information seems unbalanced. There are also assumptions made about 'other domains of development' and language learning that need more fleshing out and do not have enough sources to support the claims like in the section about social-emotional development and the claim about "proper emotional development". [ Note: Keep this in mind when editing lead section in main article. ]The headings can be redone to be a little more descriptive, and maybe some sections can be combined so that they are more clear, for example, some of the factual content (with appropriate citations) under the header of 'role of input and the environment' could be helpful in setting up the article if it was used in the first intro paragraph. Happy editing! Versa1 (talk ) 04:42, 26 September 2019 (UTC)~

Dear JoeNavek,

I really hope my writing does not ruin your sandbox!

Anyway, I particularly like your adding specific survey regarding cochlear implants. When I saw this, I wonder how deaf children have implanted cochlear and you did solve my question. There are a couple of suggestions that I think it might be helpful for you to edit this article. The bold sentences are original ones from this article and I suggested how to edit that part under each bold sentence.

-Hyeonah

1. The early experience of deaf children, however, is highly variable and frequently atypical from a language acquisition perspective.

- This sentence is at odds with the first sentence in the lead section. [Note: They are. ]

2. While cochlear implants provide auditory stimulation, not all children succeed at acquiring spoken language completely.[10] Children who received cochlear implants before twelve months old were found to be significantly more likely to perform at age-level standards for spoken language than children who received implants later.[13][14]

- The connection between those two sentences is not natural. I think "While cochlear implants provide auditory stimulation, not all children succeed at acquiring spoken language completely. This is because an age of a deaf child can play an important role in the success of cochlear implants. Specifically, children who received cochlear implants before twelve months old were found to be significantly more likely to perform at age-level standards for spoken language than children who received implants later."

3. Deaf children born to deaf parents

About three percent of deaf children are born to two deaf parents, with one percent born to one hearing and one deaf parent.[9]:153, 155

Deaf children born to hearing parents

About 96% of deaf children are born to hearing parents.[9]:153, 155 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.[citation needed]

- Does this piece of information should be divided into different paragraphs in the "Role of input and the environment"?

'''4. ASL employs signs made by moving one's hands along with one's facial expressions and body language. Some studies indicate that if a deaf child learns sign language, he or she will be less likely to learn spoken languages because they will lose motivation.[citation needed] However, Humphries insists that there is no evidence for this.'''

- It would be better why Humphries is against with the side effects of sign language on spoken languages.

'''5. According to Goldin-Meadow, reading requires two essential abilities: familiarity with a language and understanding the mapping between that language and the written word. However, reading is possible if deaf children learn ASL. Once they have acquired ASL, deaf children learn how to map between sign language and print so that they can learn English. Several techniques are used to help bridge the gap between ASL and spoken language or the "translation process" such as sandwiching and chaining.'''

- Need to cite Goldlin-Meadow's argument

Consider using readings from Weeks 1 and 7. Another of this article's many gaps is that it does not refer to Nicaraguan Sign Language. The Goldin-Meadow reading in Week 7 has a brief summary of the significance of that language. [Note: 'All good suggestions that will be included and are currently being incorporated into edits. ] Cecilemckee (talk) 17:00, 28 September 2019 (UTC)