Languages and Thought

There's a movement now, I don't remember the name, that teaches ASL to hearing babies of hearing parents, starting as soon as possible after birth. The idea is to strengthen those uber-pathways sozobe mentioned, and make it easier for the baby to learn English, and generally raise intelligence...

I think it's always good to be bilingual/multilingual, and learning early is a great way to do that. But something in this smacks of parents pushing their 10-year olds to graduate college...

Yep, Wy, I don't think there is a movement per se, with a name and everything... Joseph Garcia's book "Sign with Your Baby" has a lot to do with it, though.

The benefits are not just neural pathway stuff but early communication and lessening of toddler frustration. Babies can sign long before they can talk. The sozlet was signing from about 7 months old, could converse quite well at 18 months, with about 250 signs. (I wrote 'em all down... that's when I lost track. ) What was astounding to me is WHAT she wanted to talk about at that age... flights of fancy (she had long involved stories about the family of orange gorillas [orangutans, I figured out] who lived in our oak tree and had a pet fox), observations ("that girl is wearing a red hat"), etc., etc. Not just the basic stuff like "I'm hungry" or "I'm tired".

She is and was MUCH less tantrum-prone than most of her peers, and her verbal skills now are off the charts. That is usual with early signers but often levels off around kindergarten, but for now, people are often absolutely gobsmacked at what she says and how she says it. Multi-syllabic words, etc., etc. (She's almost but not yet 3.)

In other words, I highly recommend signing with HEARING babies, too. (In the process of writing an article on this now.)

That's very interesting, Sozobe, I'm glad to learn from your experience with Sozlet. I can see how signing could be such a jump start.

Wow, soz. . . that's incredibly neat. . . I've always planned to raise bilingual children. . . and now I'm fascinated with this ASL idea. . .

Teaching ASL to hearing infants is rawther trendy in certain circles these days. It's so 'mainstream' that people at work have told me about seeing t.v. programs on the subject - on regular network television. A friend told me (and I remembered it once she mentioned it again) that she'd had her hearing daughter in an ASL program at the local community centre nearly 10 years ago - there's apparently an 'ASL for hearing children' daycare at their Sunday School now as well.

Yep, I've been meeting more and more people who say they taught their kids some sign, and are interested in seeing us doing it.

I will say that the vast, vast majority of the people I have met, though, have taught their babies/ kids a selection of the most practical signs... "more", "milk", "hungry", "hurt", etc. This is a much different thing than language immersion, being exposed to grammatical ASL. The ASL for hearing children daycare is in that category, and would seem to go much further than what I have seen... that's cool.

Are the babies, hmm. . . more communicative, then? I mean, can you teach a child to communicate things like hunger, pain, etc earlier than a non-signing child could? The implications are startling. . . being able to know what your baby wants before your baby can communicate. . .

Yep. Moms are pretty damn good at figuring things out, and babies are pretty good at communicating by their cries et al, but I can't quite imagine figuring out without ASL that what she wanted to communicate when she was pointing urgently at our tree was that orange gorillas lived there.

that's just incredible. . .

The research on this goes back quite a distance. I remember this being covered in the developmental psych courses I took 20 - 25 years ago. Since I was one of those kids who was working on their 3rd language before they were 5, it seemed obvious to me. The earlier you can communicate in any language, the better it will be for future language development.

Fer sure.

It does seem like the ASL gains are gone by about kindergarten, though, according to research thus far. The hearing kids who learn ASL get a big early jump, and are also usually less tantrummy, but they haven't (last I checked, but I saw reference to a new study recently that I haven't tracked down yet) shown that there are any permanent gains.

perhaps not in ASL, but I do remember research that indicates polylingual children do better in school. . . not in terms of behavior, but in terms of mental and speech capacity, vocabulary, and word skills like that. I suppose that since ASL is not a spoken language, the grammatical type gains wouldn't be seen.

But are children with ASL more effectively expressive? :-)

Oh, there are definitely early grammatical type gains, it's just a matter of whether it sticks around. I always thought it was odd that the research showed it leveling off, what I wondered if it was because the kids studied stopped signing when they started talking. Sozlet's still doing both.

hmm. . . do you use the opal system in any way? Or, well, a bastardization of opal. . . you know, using one language exclusively for periods of time? I think that'd be so cool. . . being able to talk to your mom in public or private about anything with most people having no idea what's going on.

I know that some kids are embarrassed to use a foreign language in front of their friends- they don't want to be out of place. . . it's such a shame. . . knowing a second language as such a young child is a gift. . . I know my mother was always scared to speak to her parents in spanish, even when they tried to keep her spanish in tact.

Princess, I've never really known anyone who wanted to learn many languages and ended up only learning ones that were fairly closely related. That seems like it would be rather difficult, and words would be easily confused. I personally don't see the point in learning, say, French or Italian or Portuguese if I already know Spanish, just because there's not much more to gain linguistically. I'd much rather learn something like Spanish, Latin, Russian, German, Chinese, Gaelic and Swahili - different linguistics entirely, and much more to learn.

Sozo, you were talking at the beginning of this like you had personal experiences such that identifying someone as growing up in a hearing environment was actually important and meaningful. Now I see you're just going off on some mystical philosophical tangent. Never mind then, if you have no real exposure to the "problem" you're so concerned with.

Well, you have a point, rufio. . . I know some people tend to get confused when trying to switch from one language to the other. For some reason, they seem to be compartmentalized in my brain, and I switch from one to the other without much overlap.

Real lingual enthusiasts will of course learn all the languages they can, to a certain point. I just think that some lingual families are so different that learning a member of a new one can erase, or erode, those "pathways" soz was talking about. You have to start from square one all over again.

rufio, what on earth? I am deaf myself, and my career is working with deaf people. I started and ran a center in L.A. that worked with deaf young adults who had come through the school system and graduated with virtually no usable skills. Where are you getting this mystical stuff from?

To answer your question, princessash, we tend to go back and forth mostly in terms of practicality... if we're chewing, we sign, if we're cutting up food (well, me, anyway), we talk. That sort of thing.

But DEFINITELY great for "secret" discussions. Especially behavioral cues. ("Did you say thank you?" "Yes" "I didn't see it" "OK, Mama, wait until she comes back" "OK.")

Rufio, do you think Sozobe doesn't have experience with what she is talking about?

<sigh> very cool, soz :-) I'm jealous, and taking notes :-)