User:Marissanicole67/Critical period hypothesis

Deaf children who are born to deaf parents who use sign language as their native language develop language normally (Newport & Meier, 1985).

Children who have normal hearing in the first year of life and later lose their hearing, as well as children who have a hearing loss in the first year of life but receive input because of a hearing device show normal syntactic abilities. This suggests that the first year of life is a critical language year for language acquisition (Friedmann & Rusou, 2015).

Accessible language is a key factor to acquiring a language. When a child is not given access to input – the language acquisition process is severely impacted. In the hearing community, not many children are affected by lack of input, as naturally spoken language is everywhere and acquiring it is effortless. However, for deaf children, access to input is not always as effortlessly available. If a deaf child does not receive accessible input during the critical years the effects are irreversible. Though input is a key component to acquiring language, as long as input is accessible during the critical years, the child will acquire the language naturally even if the input is not perfect.