From Gesture to Language in Hearing and Deaf Children

CHAPTER 20 From Communication to Language in Hearing and Deaf Children

CHAPTER 20 From Communication to Language in Hearing and Deaf Children M.C. CASELLI and V. VOLTERRA Introduction In this chapter, we present the results of two studies previously reported separately (Caselli. 1983a; Volterra. 1981a). These studies deal with the earlieststages of communicative and linguistic development comparing hearing children exposed to spoken language with deaf children of deaf parents exposed to sign language. Recent research has shed light on the role ofgestures in the preverbal period of communicative development of hearing children. These studies stress how gestures are used with different (vocal) performatives in a rich and effective way (Bruner. 1975b; Camaioni. Volterra. & Bates. 1976; R.A. Clark. 1978); and how gestural communication. cognitive and symbolic development. and the acquisition of language are related to one another (Bates. Benigni, Bretherton, Camaioni, & Volterra, 1979; Nokony. 1978; Caselli. this volume). In particular two types of communicative gestures have been identified in hearing children, specifically, deictic and referential. Deicticgestures.such as showing,giving,and pointing,appearwhen the child isabout to months ofage, and at the very beginning they are produced one at time and often simultaneously with vocal signals. Elsewhere (Bates, Camaioni, & Volterra. 1975), these gestures were called "performative": they express only the child's communicative intention to request or to declare; the referential meaning communicated is given entirely by the context in which the communication takes place. A developmental sequence from showing and giving to pointing was also described. Pointing out an object to others, which is the last of these gestures to appear. represents the final detachment from physical contact with the object. The child gradually acquires the capacity to refer to an objector an event in order tocommunicatewith othersabout it without physicallymakingcontact with it. All these deictic gestures change their semantic content according to the context to which they are referring. Referential gestures, which some researchers call 'signs' (see Acredolo and Goodwyn, this volume). stand for or represent stable referents. Their meaning is The two studies reported in this chapter were originally published separately in slightly different versions as "Communication to language: Deaf children's and hearing children's development compared" by M.C. Caselli, Sign Language Studies, 1983,39, 113-143; and as "Gestures, signs, and words at two years: When does communication become language'?" by V. Volterra, Sign Language Studies, 1981,33,351-361. 264 M.e. Caselli and V. Volterra conventionalized by the children and their caregivers. The basic semanticcontent ofthese referential gestures does not change with varyingcontexts. These signs or referential gestures tend to appear a little later than the deictic gestures and often specify what was an earlierstage referred to only through pointingorotherdeictic gestures. We have noted elsewhere that these gestures pass through the same decontextualization process as words. and they become true symbols only at the end of this process (Caselli. this volume). According to these findings. we have analyzed the earliest phases of communicative and linguisticdevelopmentofdeafchildren with deafparents who are exposed from birth to sign language in order to compare their gestural communication with that observed in hearing children. For this comparison. we have analyzed the data on the prelinguistic and linguistic communication ofboth deaf and hearing children using the same criteria. Our first question was: can we find differences between the gestural communication of a child exposed to a sign language and of a child exposed to a spoken language? Ifso. at what point do the differences occur? The results ofthis comparison might provide an opportunity to understand the role of linguistic input in prelinguistic communication and language development. Our purpose here. then. is to show the similarities and differences between the hearing and the deaf child in gestural communication and to illuminate the process children go through when making the transition from an earlier communicative system to a specific spoken or signed language. We also address the question of linguistic advantage. whether held by children acquiring spoken language or children acquiring sign language. a question raised in recent years byseveral investigators (Boyes Braem. 1973; Maestas y Moores. 1980; McIntire. 1977; Schlesinger & Meadow. 1972; Wilbur & Jones. 1974). The operating hypothesis is that for language expressed and perceived in different modes it is possible to identify similar stages of acquisition. both in chronology and in sequence ofdevelopment. Method The data reported here refer to four subjects. two deaf children of deaf parents and two hearing children ofhearing parents. One deafchild (K) was exposed from birth to American Sign Language (ASL). The data on this subject are part of a larger corpus collected by Bellugi and...