Educational Psychology and Special Education

Word-learning skills of 19 deaf/hard-of-hearing preschoolers were assessed by observing their ability to learn new words in two contexts. The first context required the use of a novel mapping strategy (i.e., making the inference that a novel word refers to a novel object) to learn the new words. The second context assessed the ability to learn new words after minimal exposure when reference was explicitly established. The children displayed three levels of word-learning skills. Eleven children learned words in both contexts. Five were able to learn new words rapidly only when reference was explicitly established. Two children did not learn new words rapidly in either context. The latter seven children were followed longitudinally. All children eventually acquired the ability to learn new words in both contexts. The deaf children's word-learning abilities were related to the size of their vocabularies. The present study suggests that word-learning strategies are acquired even when children are severely delayed in their language development and they learn language in an atypical environment.

Attention regulation among people, objects, and symbols was investigated in 48 toddlers at 20-24 months (M = 22 months); 24 hearing child/hearing mother dyads and 24 deaf child/ hearing mother dyads. Hearing loss was prelingual and in the severe to profound range for all deaf children. Deaf children spent significantly less time in episodes of joint attention and significantly more time alone with objects than did hearing children. Analyses of time spent in different kinds of joint attention revealed two differences: deaf children spent virtually no time in symbol-infused joint attention while their hearing peers spent nearly one third of their time in this attention state; deaf children spent significantly more time in coordinated joint attention than did their hearing peers. The results suggested that time spent in joint attention increases during the second year even if children do not infuse symbols into their interactions with others.

Bilingual code switching within sentences (as in "The towel roja was dirt)" ') is often observed in bilingual communities. The present study addressed two issues. First, what is the nature of the grammatical rules that underlie code switching? Second, how do bilingual speakers acquire such rules? We addressed the first issue by obtaining judgments of the grammaticality of four types of sentences containing code-switched words. Judgments of acceptability seemed to be based on two rules: (1) Code switching can occur only when the code-switched words are positioned in accord with the rules for which they are appropriate lexical items; (2) code switching within word boundaries is considered ungrammatical. We addressed the second issue by exploring the effects of age and code switching experience on the grammatical judgments of bilingual children and adults. Extensive code-switching experience did not seem to be necessary for bilingual speakers to know the grammatical constraints of code switching. This suggests that the constraints of code switching are based on the integration of the grammars of the two code-switched languages rather than on the creation of a third grammar. There were developmental changes in the judgments made to the sentences. All aged subjects Jound sentences that violated the word-order rule (1 above) unacceptable. However, the youngest children (8-to lO-year-olds) found mixing within a word acceptable. This developmental change could be due to a change in the grammar of code switching, in the ability to make metalinguistic judgments, or in the child's general knowledge about the nature of languages.

The purpose of this article is to inform researchers and practitioners about potential challenges in the selection, administration, and interpretation of results of measures of vocabulary assessment when working with deaf and hard-of-hearing children. This article reviews methods that can be used to assess vocabulary of children through the age of 5 years, including naturalistic observation, parent report measures, and standardized vocabulary tests. The authors also describe procedures to assess word-learning processes available to children to facilitate vocabulary acquisition. General cautions regarding the use of assessment tools with deaf and hard-of-hearing children are reviewed, as well as cautions for specific assessment measures. Finally, based on available research, suggestions are offered regarding what each assessment test can tell us about deaf and hard-of-hearing children's vocabulary development.

We examined communication between hearing mothers and their deaf or hearing children longitudinally at child-ages 22 months and 3 years. Specifically, we analyzed both the effects of child deafness and developmental change on pragmatic and dialogic characteristics of communication. From 22 months to 3 years, deaf and hearing children's communicative skills improved similarly along some dimensions: as they grew older, both deaf and hearing children increased the amount they communicated, became increasingly responsive to their mothers' attentional focus, and were responsible for initiating a higher proportion of the dyads' conversations. On the other hand, deaf children were less skilled at maintaining topics, and the pragmatic function of their communication was more likely to be unclear compared to hearing children. Deaf children were also more likely to direct their mothers and less likely to ask questions than hearing children. Communication by hearing mothers was pri...

This study evaluated psychometric properties of 2 phonological awareness (PA) tests normed for hearing children when used with deaf and hard-of-hearing (DHH) children with functional hearing. It also provides an in-depth description of these children's PA. Method: One hundred and eight DHH children (mean age = 63.3 months) with cochlear implants or hearing aids were assessed in the fall and spring of the school year. Sixty-three percent communicated only with spoken language; 37% communicated with both sign and speech. Examiners administered PA subtests from the Phonological Awareness Test-2 and the Test of Preschool Early Literacy, along with assessments of speech perception and early literacy. Results: Item analyses indicated that both tests showed good psychometric properties (e.g., high item discriminations and internal consistencies). DHH children scored higher on subtests and items that measured words, rhymes, and syllables than those that assessed phonemes. Although subtest difficulty influenced the factor structure in the fall, spring PA was best characterized as a single factor. PA correlated concurrently and predictively with early literacy. Conclusions: This study suggests that these 2 standardized tests are valid for use with DHH children with functional hearing. Although delayed, these children's PA was structurally similar to that of hearing children.

Preschool and many older children often have difficulty understanding who carries out the complement action (e.g., to go in sentences such as Mary promised John to go; this is so, even though they easily understand this information in sentences such as John told Mary to go. C. Chomsky (1969) proposed that children's errors arise from the overgeneral application of a purely structural Minimal Distance Principle. Maratsos (1974), however, hypothesized that children err by overgeneral&ing a different principle which he called the Semantic Role Principle. According to this principle, the GoaLRecipient of the spoken message, not the closest noun phrase, is understood as the person who carries out the act referred to by the infinitival complement. The two studies reported here were designed to determine which of these principles children use. Preschool children were taught to understand a specially designed novel construction. The children then acted out sentences containing related but novel uses of the construction such that they would respond differentially according to which interpretive principle they used. The results strongly favored the Semantic Role Principle, rather than the MDP described by Chomsky (1969), or a related, more complex MDP described by Rosenbaum (1967). It is further discussed how children's formulation of the Semantic Role Principle, rather than the MDP, might arise from their prior analyses of related constructions, such as the imperative construction, rather than following from an innate preference, as suggested in Maratsos (1974).

Specific characteristics of early literacy environments support hearing children's emergent literacy. The researchers investigated these characteristics' role in emergent literacy in young deaf and hard of hearing (DHH) children, using the Early Language and Literacy Classroom Observation (ELLCO; M. W. Smith, Dickinson, Sangeorge, & Anastasopoulos, 2002). Eighteen self-contained classrooms of preschool, kindergarten, and first-grade DHH children (N = 40) were studied. Hierarchical linear analysis was used to examine study participants' classroom environment and growth in emergent literacy skills. Correlations suggested that classroom environment was more closely related to vocabulary and phonological awareness in DHH children than in typically hearing children. Major differences among classrooms were also indicated. However, growth in children's skills did not correlate strongly with attributes captured by the ELLCO. This suggests that classrooms promoting emergent l...

Deaf and hard-of-hearing (DHH) children's ability to rapidly learn novel words through direct reference and through novel mapping (i.e., inferring that a novel word refers to a novel object) was examined. Ninety-eight DHH children, ranging from 27 to 82 months old, drawn from 12 schools in five states participated. In two tasks that differed in how reference was established, word-learning abilities were measured by children's ability to learn novel words after only three exposures. Three levels of word-learning abilities were identified. Twelve children did not rapidly learn novel words. Thirty-six children learned novel words rapidly but only in the direct reference task. Forty-nine children learned novel words rapidly in both direct reference and novel mapping tasks. These levels of word-learning abilities were evident in children who were in oral-only and in signing environments, in children with cochlear implants, and in deaf children of deaf parents. Children's word-learning abilities were more strongly correlated to lexicon size than age, and this relation was similar for children in these different language-learning environments. Acquisition of these word-learning abilities seems based on linguistic mechanisms that are available to children in a wide range of linguistic environments. In addition, the wordlearning tasks offer a promising dynamic assessment tool. We would like to thank the teachers for their wonderful support and assistance in this study. We are also grateful to Sandy Huston and Dr. Danielle Ross for their invaluable help with data collection and to

The goal of this study was to explore the development of spoken phonological awareness for deaf and hard-ofhearing children (DHH) with functional hearing (i.e., the ability to access spoken language through hearing). Teachers explicitly taught five preschoolers the phonological awareness skills of syllable segmentation, initial phoneme isolation, and rhyme discrimination in the context of a multifaceted emergent literacy intervention. Instruction occurred in settings where teachers used simultaneous communication or spoken language only. A multiple-baseline across skills design documented a functional relation between instruction and skill acquisition for those children who did not have the skills at baseline with one exception; one child did not meet criteria for syllable segmentation. These results were confirmed by changes on phonological awareness tests that were administered at the beginning and end of the school year. We found that DHH children who varied in primary communication mode, chronological age, and language ability all benefited from explicit instruction in phonological awareness.

We examined acquisition of grapheme-phoneme correspondences by 4 deaf and hard-of-hearing preschoolers using instruction from a curriculum designed specifically for this population supplemented by Visual Phonics. Learning was documented through a multiple baseline across content design as well as descriptive analyses. Preschoolers who used sign language and had average to low-average receptive vocabulary skills and varied speech perception skills acquired all correspondences after instruction. They were also able to use that knowledge while reading words. On a posttest, the children were able to decode graphemes into corresponding phonemes and identified about half of the words that were included during instruction. However, they did not identify any novel words. Descriptive analyses suggest that the children used Visual Phonics as an effective mnemonic device to recall correspondences and that deaf and hard-of-hearing preschoolers, even those with no speech perception abilities, benefited from explicit instruction in the grapheme-phoneme relationship using multimodality support.

Data from a growing number of research studies indicate that children with hearing loss are delayed in Theory of Mind (ToM) development when compared to their typically developing, hearing peers. While other researchers have studied the developmental trajectories of ToM in school-age students who are deaf, a limited number have addressed the need for interventions for this population. The present study extends the current research on ToM interventions to the Prekindergarten and Kindergarten levels. This study used a single-case multiple baseline design to examine the effects of a ToM intervention on participants' false belief understanding as well as outcomes on a near generalization measure and a far generalization measure. A ToM thought bubble intervention (i.e., a visual representation of what people are thinking) developed by Wellman and Peterson (2013 Deafness, thought bubbles, and theory-of-mind development. Developmental Psychology, 49, 2357-2367) was modified in key area...

Already well documented for hearing children, schooling's effects on early literacy skills for young students who are deaf or hard of hearing (DHH) were examined for the first time in the present study. Piecewise growth curve modeling was used to describe 3-, 4-, and 5-year-old students' growth in phonological awareness, letter-word identification, and vocabulary during 2 years of schooling and the intervening summer (N = 56). Amplification mode was cochlear implants for 45% of the sample and hearing aids for 54%. Classroom communication mode was spoken language only (for 61%) or sign language (39%). Across all skills, significant growth occurred during the 2 years of schooling but not during the summer. These findings underscore early education's importance in promoting DHH children's critical early skills. Universal preschool intervention, including during summer, may be important in ensuring that DHH children have an adequate foundation when schooling begins.