Edited by: Aaron Shield, Miami University, United States
Reviewed by: Kristin Snoddon, Ryerson University, Canada; Diane Lillo-Martin, University of Connecticut, United States; Jessica Scott, Georgia State University, United States
This article was submitted to Language Sciences, a section of the journal Frontiers in Psychology
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Experimental studies report positive effects of signing for language acquisition and communication in children with and without language development delays. However, little data are available on natural kindergarten settings. Therefore, our study used questionnaire data to investigate the sign learning in hearing children (aged 3;7–5;9 years) with and without language development delays in an inclusive kindergarten group with a co-enrolled deaf child (aged 3;8 years) and a deaf signing educator. We observed that the hearing children in this co-enrollment group learned more signs than the hearing children from groups with only hearing educators who learned signs in a training program. Hearing children’s sign learning showed a tendency toward correlating positively with their level of spoken language development. However, the individual background for children with language development delays impacted this relationship. Additionally, we examined the modality use of all children in interactions with hearing and deaf educators and peers using questionnaire and video data. Despite acquiring signs, hearing children predominantly used spoken language with hearing educators and predominantly nonverbal communication strategies with the deaf educator and the deaf child. Children with language development delays used code-blending with hearing educators in a few cases. The deaf child used mainly sign language for interactions with the deaf educator and mainly nonverbal communication with hearing educators and peers. Overall, our results suggest that the presence of a deaf educator increases sign learning in hearing children. However, in interactions during free play, they barely used signs making it particularly challenging for the deaf child to participate. This reveals that, in addition to a deaf role model, more sign language competent peers and targeted approaches increasing the use of the visual modality are required.
Communication skills are key to participating in interactions (
Deaf children of deaf parents acquire sign language from their parents as native languages and reach similar milestones at similar ages compared to hearing children acquiring spoken languages (
A study by
Concerning interactions, there are studies from different kindergarten settings often focusing on different aspects such as educator–child or peer interactions, children’s language profiles, and language modality. Modality is the channel through which language is produced and received, i.e., spoken languages
In terms of peer interactions, there are a few more studies available investigating communicative interactions between DHH children, children with language development delays and their typically developing hearing peers. Peer interactions are important for children to learn social skills and are critical contributors to social development (
In bimodal-bilingual settings, all children are offered sign and spoken language and, thus, two modalities are available for hearing and DHH children to communicate. A study by
Therefore, our study used questionnaire and video data to examine the sign learning and use of children in an inclusive kindergarten group into which a deaf child was co-enrolled simultaneously with a deaf educator six months before data collection, so that a bimodal-bilingual setting was established. In this study, a bimodal-bilingual setting refers to an environment in which at least one deaf educator communicates with all children in sign language while at least one hearing educator communicates in spoken language, accompanied in part by signs. The children in our sample are supervised by one deaf educator and several hearing educators. Our data will be directly contrasted with data from inclusive kindergarten groups with hearing educators of
In total, 12 children (seven boys and five girls) from a co-enrollment kindergarten group participated in this study (for detailed participant background information, see
Demographic data, SBE-3-KT-score and sign score of the children sorted by hearing level, age of German acquisition and speech therapy.
Child no. | Gender | Age in months | Individual background | Therapy | Language | SBE-3-KT score (max. 172) | Sign score (max. 94) | Speech intelligibility in % | Speech comprehension in % |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
1 | M | 44 | – | – | German, Polish | 118 | 2 | 60 | 70 |
2 | F | 45 | – | – | German | 153 | 17 | 75 | 90 |
3 | M | 50 | – | – | German | 172 | 9 | 90 | 100 |
4 | F | 52 | – | – | German | 172 | 30 | 100 | 100 |
5 | M | 54 | – | Ergotherapy | German, Arabic | 39 | 3 | 30 | 30 |
6 | M | 55 | – | – | German | 171 | 10 | 100 | 100 |
7 | M | 57 | – | – | German | 172 | 7 | 100 | 90 |
8 | F | 64 | – | – | German | 172 | 31 | 100 | 100 |
9 | M | 53 | – | – | Croatian, English, German (starting at 3 months) | 124 | 35 | 75 | 80 |
10 | F | 43 | Epilepsy (caused by FCD or ganglioglioma), speech center affected | Speech therapy, ergotherapy | German | 6 | 17 | 50 | 90 |
11 | M | 69 | Three detected genetic defects | Speech therapy, ergotherapy, physical therapy | German | 144 | 0 | 70 | 70 |
12 | F | 44 | Sensory-neural deafness | Speech therapy, ergotherapy | DGS, German | – | 93 | 10 | 0 |
In this study, we used the combination of questionnaire and video recordings to tackle our research question. The questionnaire was answered by both parents and educators and comprised four different sections with demographic information being provided at the beginning of the questionnaire prior to the sections (see
In addition, video data were collected during free play sessions in order to analyze language and modality use during interactions. A total of 13 cameras were installed in the rooms so that the children’s interactions could be recorded in all areas as far as possible. One hour of free play was filmed for each of the two survey days per child.
The spoken vocabulary and grammar part was evaluated following the given procedure of the SBE-3-KT (
First, we compared the sign score of the 11 hearing children from our co-enrollment group with the data of
Regarding the pragmatic profile, we only evaluated the four questions that concern the children’s active use of a modality during interactions to get an impression of children’s modality use over time from the educator’s perspective. The first three questions relate to educator-child interactions and the fourth question relates to peer interactions (for details, see the
The video data were coded with respect to language use and interactions motivated by
For each interaction, children’s interaction partners were determined, and modalities used by the children and their interaction partners were coded including spoken language, sign language, code-blending, code-switching, and nonverbal communication strategies such as pointing, nodding, head shaking, laughing, giving or taking objects. Nonverbal communication was only selected when no lexicalized words or signs occurred within the coded interaction and, thus, none of the other categories applied. Code-blending was selected when spoken words and signs were produced simultaneously, even if this happened only once within an interaction. In contrast, code-switching was assigned if a child switched from spoken language to sign language or vice versa. The videos were coded by two student assistants who are hearing advanced signers and had previously been trained in a similar coding scheme during a previous project (
First, we assessed sign learning in the hearing children across all groups, i.e., in the co-enrollment group and the two implementation groups from
Sign score for hearing children by groups with (1) the inclusive kindergarten groups with low implementation of signs from
Next, we analyzed the relationship between the sign score and the level of language development in spoken language in the hearing children of our co-enrollment group. Children’s sign score and SBE-3-KT score correlated weakly for the hearing children (
Correlation between sign score and SBE-3-KT-score for the co-enrollment group for (A) all hearing children and (B) only hearing children acquiring German from birth and without speech therapy.
In educator-child interactions, hearing children without speech therapy and acquiring German from birth were all reported to use spoken language in complete sentences with some exceptions of single words, two-word sentences, or other modalities (for a summary presentation of the data, see
Active use of modalities and communication strategies for each child in interactions with educators as indicated in the respective section of the educator questionnaire.+
Child | Spoken language | Sign language | Spoken language and sign language | Nonverbal communication (e.g., mimic or gestures) | Emotional/passive reaction (e.g., crying) |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
Child 1 | + | − | − | + | − |
Child 2 | + | − | − | − | − |
Child 3 | + | − | − | − | − |
Child 4 | + | + | − | + | − |
Child 5 | + | − | − | + | − |
Child 6 | + | − | − | + | − |
Child 7 | + | + | − | + | + |
Child 8 | + | − | − | + | − |
Child 9 | + | − | − | + | − |
Child 10 | + | + | − | + | + |
Child 11 | + | − | − | + | − |
Child 12 | − | + | − | − | − |
A “+” indicates that the modality was selected for the child for at least one question.
For participating in peer interactions, hearing children without speech therapy and acquiring German from birth were all reported to use spoken language (for a summary presentation of the data, see
Active use of modalities and communication strategies for each child in peer interactions.+
Child | Spoken language | Sign language | Spoken and sign language | Playing alone | Playing alongside the other children | Watching the other children | Need of adult guidance |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Child 1 | + | − | − | − | − | − | − |
Child 2 | + | − | − | − | − | − | − |
Child 3 | + | − | − | − | − | − | − |
Child 4 | + | − | − | − | + | − | − |
Child 5 | + | − | − | − | − | − | − |
Child 6 | + | − | − | − | − | − | − |
Child 7 | + | − | − | − | − | − | − |
Child 8 | + | − | + | − | − | − | − |
Child 9 | + | − | − | − | − | − | − |
Child 10 | − | − | + | − | + | − | − |
Child 11 | + | − | − | + | − | − | − |
Child 12 | + | − | − | − | − | − | + |
A “+” indicates that the educators observed the respective modality.
Overall, 1,254 interactions of all 11 children were coded with 193 educator-child interactions (15.4%) and 1,061 peer interactions (84.6%).
Occurrences of language modalities as percentages with absolute numbers in parentheses used by the hearing children and the deaf child when interacting with hearing educators, the deaf educator, hearing peers or the deaf peer in the video data.
Interactions | Spoken language | Nonverbal communication | Code-blending | Code-switching | Sign language | Total |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Hearing educator | 54.3% |
42.2% |
3.4% |
0% |
0% |
9.9% |
Deaf educator | 23.1% |
76.9% |
0% |
0% |
0% |
1.1% |
Hearing peer | 72.4% (742) | 27.4% |
0.2% |
0% |
0% |
87.7% |
Deaf peer | 13.3% |
80.0% |
0% |
0% |
6.7% |
1.3% |
Hearing educator | 4.3% |
43.5% |
8.7% |
8.7% |
34.8% |
27.1% |
Deaf educator | 0% |
36.6% |
0% |
0% |
63.4% |
48.2% |
Hearing peer | 14.3% |
66.7% |
0% |
0% |
19.0% |
24.7% |
Hearing children were involved in 1,169 interactions and mostly interacted with their peers and less with the educators except for child 10, who was undergoing speech therapy. In interactions with hearing educators, the hearing children primarily used spoken language followed by nonverbal communication strategies and rarely code-blending. However, the two hearing children undergoing speech therapy, children 10 and 11, mainly used nonverbal communication strategies with their educators followed by spoken language. The four code-blending interactions were all observed in children with delayed spoken language development in German toward hearing educators, two in child 10, one in child 11 and one in child 5. When communicating with the deaf educator, the hearing children relied on nonverbal communication strategies but less on spoken language. In peer interactions, hearing children used predominantly spoken language followed by nonverbal communication strategies. In contrast, the children undergoing speech therapy mainly used nonverbal communication strategies for peer interactions but also spoken language. Code-blending and sign language were only applied in a few cases by hearing children while code-switching was not observed. The two peer-interactions with code-blending were observed in two hearing children without disabilities, child 7 and 8, both with child 4 without disabilities. The only observed interaction in which sign language was used by a hearing child was detected in child 5 when communicating with the deaf child.
The deaf child participated in 85 interactions predominantly with the educators and comparatively less with her peers. Communicating with educators, the deaf child predominantly interacted with the deaf educator mostly using sign language and, in fewer cases, nonverbal communication strategies. In contrast, interactions with the hearing educators were much less and the pattern of used modalities was reversed with additional observed modalities. The deaf child primarily used nonverbal communication strategies and sign language whereas spoken language, code-blending, and code-switching were only used in a few interactions. In interactions with her hearing peers, the deaf child applied mostly nonverbal communication strategies but also used sign language and spoken language.
In our study, we investigated sign learning in hearing children and language modality use of hearing children and a deaf child in a co-enrollment kindergarten setting. The deaf child was co-enrolled six months before data collection in parallel with a deaf educator. We observed that hearing children in the co-enrollment setting had learned significantly more signs than children from inclusive day care centers whose hearing educators had learned signs in a training program (
The analysis of sign learning revealed that the hearing children in our co-enrollment group with a deaf educator learned signs. Compared with data from children of inclusive day care groups with sign-trained hearing educators (
Furthermore, we observed that hearing children’s sign learning showed a tendency to correlate positively with their spoken language abilities. However, this relation does not become significant in our data. Nevertheless, applying the analysis to a more homogeneous group by excluding children with language development delays and onset of German acquisition later than birth, the relation increases. The general tendency of this relation is in line with
Despite acquiring signs, hearing children in our study rarely used the visual modality in interactions and mostly interacted in spoken language instead. This finding is consistent with research from inclusive kindergarten groups whose educators were trained to use signs in interactions with children (
In interactions with educators, two hearing children without disabilities sometimes used signs according to the questionnaire data, but in the video data sign use toward educators by hearing children was observed only for hearing children with language development delays: They sporadically used code blending in interactions with a hearing educator. Furthermore, in interactions with hearing educators, hearing children predominantly used spoken language. This finding is not surprising, as spoken language is the national language and the main mode of communication for both. In contrast, when communicating with the deaf educator, hearing children were never observed to use sign language or signs but mainly used nonverbal communication strategies and sometimes spoken language. This observation might be surprising because children at this age are expected to be aware of which language their interaction partners use (
In peer interactions, signs were barely used by hearing children as well: According to the questionnaire data, only two hearing children used a combination of words and signs, the child with language development delay due to epilepsy and one child without disabilities and growing up monolingually. This reveals that the child with epilepsy could communicate better with signs in some situations and, thus, could participate more easily in interactions. Therefore, this child benefited from the signs introduced in the group as indicated by richer sign than spoken vocabulary and the use of the visual modality for communication with both, educators and children. Using signs may have enabled that child to compensate for spoken language skills that were more challenging to acquire because of her individual background. Thus, a visual language may have been another way to participate in interactions. This assumption is additionally supported by the data from other children with language development delays who sporadically used mixed modalities in communication with hearing educators of our co-enrollment group and is consistent with
The deaf child predominantly interacted with educators, especially with the deaf educator, consistent with the observations in
The heterogenous group in our study provided a unique opportunity to examine the sign learning and use of deaf and hearing children with and without disabilities in a bimodal-bilingual kindergarten setting with a deaf educator and hearing educators. But investigating this small co-enrollment sample also led to some limitations: The small sample size limited the statistical power of the comparison of the sign scores of the hearing children of our co-enrollment group with the sign scores of groups with only hearing educators from
Furthermore, the test used to assess the spoken language skills might not reflect individual differences in our data sufficiently. The SBE-3-KT was used to allow for a direct comparison with the data from
Another restricting factor could be previous sign knowledge of the hearing children. It cannot be ruled out that some children had contact with signs prior to the hiring of the deaf educator since the deaf child attended another group within the same kindergarten before enrollment in the observed group. Moreover, another deaf child attended the kindergarten two years ago, but in a different group. However, data from
Finally, it should be noted that the deaf child is one of the youngest children in the group and peer interaction is known to increase with age as mentioned above. To some extent, the lower number of interactions of the deaf child with other children could also be influenced by this fact. In addition, the deaf child attended the group for a shorter period of time than almost all other children studied. As outlined above, time and familiarity with peers are relevant for interactions of deaf children in particular, therefore, these factors might also have had an influence on the observed peer interactions.
Overall, we observed that hearing children learned signs, but they barely used these for interactions, not even with deaf interlocutors. This suggests that more sign language input as well as language planning encouraging these children to use sign language are needed. Improving normally developing children’s sign language use in interactions is additionally important to increase opportunities for children who use sign language or signs for communication to participate in interactions: In our study, hearing children with language development delays used signs in restricted contexts. In particular for the deaf child, the fact that six months after co-enrollment hardly any signs were used in interactions during free play, especially between peers, limited the possibilities to participate in interactions. In addition to targeted approaches that strengthen the use of the visual modality, the presence of more deaf peers (
The original contributions presented in the study are included in the article/
Ethical review and approval was not required for the study on human participants in accordance with the local legislation and institutional requirements. Written informed consent to participate in this study was provided by the participants' legal guardian/next of kin.
MG-K and BH-F contributed to the conceptualization and design of the study. MG-K conducted the investigation and wrote the original draft. MG-K and AW performed the formal analysis. MG-K, AW, and BH-F were involved in writing, reviewing, and editing of the manuscript. BH-F supervised and provided funding for the investigation. All authors contributed to the article and approved the submitted version.
This study was funded by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF, FKZ: 01NV1706), awarded to BH-F and the Faculty of Education, Universität Hamburg, awarded to MG-K.
The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.
All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article, or claim that may be made by its manufacturer, is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.
We are grateful to the kindergarten, the educators, the children, and their parents without whom this study would not have been possible. We thank our student assistants Isabelle Birett, Maxine Hinrichsen, and Elisabeth Weiglin for their support during the project.
The Supplementary material for this article can be found online at: