Abstract
Visual Attention Skills and Sign Language Acquisition: What We Can Learn from Deaf Parents
In Early Intervention, we often think of visual attention strategies as waving a hand or stomping a foot to get a child’s attention. However, for these strategies to work, basic visual attention needs to be developed way before these complex strategies. Visual attention is knowing what to attend to because it’s visually important. We are finding that these skills are often overlooked. Research shows that deaf children may have age appropriate language skills when they leave early intervention, but not strong enough language skills to learn literacy when they enter kindergarten. We suspect that teaching visual attention skills in early intervention can help prevent this language discrepancy. Through collaboration between our programs, we have been observing some of the explicit and implicit visual attention strategies that Deaf parents use and teach to families. We believe other hearing professionals will benefit from what we have learned together.
“Motherese” or Child Directed Speech/Sign is a natural way that parents teach their children the purpose of language, why to attend to it, what power it has, and how to build on current skills. This is an innate skill that mothers have – hearing mothers with speech and Deaf mothers with visual language. Hearing mothers, unfortunately, can’t use the exact same strategies with their deaf/hard of hearing child and need to be taught what Deaf mothers do. (One of the many reasons why it is crucial to have Deaf professionals involved in early intervention – they naturally know how to teach these visual attention skills.)
We talk about signing all the time, so kids have the opportunity to over ”see” what we say – which is important – but not as helpful if they have not yet learned what to attend to. We can’t just sign around children all the time, we need to first teach the foundational skills of what to attend to visually, why that information is important, AND interact with the language.
We will share stories regarding our collaboration and specific strategies that we have felt were impactful.
We will share stories regarding our collaboration and specific strategies that we have felt were impactful.
“Motherese” or Child Directed Speech/Sign is a natural way that parents teach their children the purpose of language, why to attend to it, what power it has, and how to build on current skills. This is an innate skill that mothers have – hearing mothers with speech and Deaf mothers with visual language. Hearing mothers, unfortunately, can’t use the exact same strategies with their deaf/hard of hearing child and need to be taught what Deaf mothers do. (One of the many reasons why it is crucial to have Deaf professionals involved in early intervention – they naturally know how to teach these visual attention skills.)
We talk about signing all the time, so kids have the opportunity to over ”see” what we say – which is important – but not as helpful if they have not yet learned what to attend to. We can’t just sign around children all the time, we need to first teach the foundational skills of what to attend to visually, why that information is important, AND interact with the language.
We will share stories regarding our collaboration and specific strategies that we have felt were impactful.
We will share stories regarding our collaboration and specific strategies that we have felt were impactful.
