Context, Cognition, and Deafness

5. Cognition and Language in Italian Deaf-Preschoolers of Deaf and Hearing Families

5 COGNITION AND LANGUAGE IN ITALIAN DEAF PRESCHOOLERS OF DEAF AND HEARING FAMILIES Elena Pizzuto, Barbara Ardito, Maria Cristina Caselli, and Virginia Volterra This chapter describes and discusses some of the major results of a study conducted on a sample of profoundly deaf Italian preschoolers, including children with deaf parents and children with hearing parents. The study explored several aspects of deaf children's cognitive, communicative, and linguistic development. We tried to determine whether and how the patterns we observed could be explained by, or at least related to, some of the major factors that notoriously interact in complex ways in determining a deaf child's developmental outcome. The study focused primarily on the child's family environment (deaf versus hearing parents ), language used at home (sign versus speech, or combinations of both), spoken language intervention, and, more generally, educational background. One of the study's major objectives was to evaluate the children's receptive and expressive language skills, trying as much as possible to use comparable assessment procedures for examining signed as compared to spoken language. It also aimed at defining an evaluation methodology that would allow us to compare the deaf children's developmental achievements with those of their hearing peers. This chapter focuses on the major results obtained by exploring the children 's cognition and their receptive language abilities in sign and speech. The study described here was developed within a broader research project conducted in collaboration with the Vatican Pediatric Hospital "Bambino Gesu" in Rome (Ossella et al. 1994). A key element of the project was the involvement ofnative LIS signers, deafcolleagues, and LIS interpreters at almost all stages in the planning and execution of the research. We are particularly grateful to Serena Corazza, Maria Luisa Franchi, Paolo Rossini, Benedetto Santarelli, and Vannina Vitale for their help in data collection and analysis; to Barbara Pennacchifor her help with computer graphics; and to Allegra Cattanifor first suggesting to us the idea ofadministering the LIS tasks to hearing children with no knowledge ofsign language. Partialfinancial supportfrom the National Research Council targeted projects "FATMA" (1991-1996), "Safeguard ofCultural Heritage" (1996-2000), and the European Commission Project "Intersign" (1993-1995) (Network, Contract #ERBCHRXCT920023) is also acknowledged. Part ofthe data and observations reported in this chapter have appeared in a different form in Ossella et al. (1994), Ardito et al. (1998), and Pizzuto et al. (1998). Minor discrepancies between the results reported here and those described in previous reports or publications are due to new analyses ofthe data conductedfor the present chapter. 49 50 Elena Pizzuto, Barbara Ardito, Maria Cristina Caselli, and Virginia Volterra A few general observations are in order. First, prior to this study, there was little information on Italian deaf preschoolers, their families, language background , or their language abilities in signing as compared to speech. Information on deaf children's family and language background and comparable information on their signed and spoken language skills is vital because these factors have been shown to influence development (Marschark 1993). However, most of the Italian studies that take into account the relevance of this information have been limited to the exploration of early sign language development and the evaluation of spoken language abilities (lexical and grammatical) in older deaf children and adolescents (Caselli et al. 1994). Other studies have explored deaf children's lexical and grammatical abilities in spoken Italian but have ignored the potential influence of sign knowledge on these abilities (Emiliani et al. 1994). A small number of deaf children (a proportion estimated to be 5-10 percent in western countries, including Italy) have deaf parents who communicate with their child primarily in sign language. Italian Sign Language (LIS) is the primary language of Italian deaf children of deaf parents. Like all the other signed languages investigated to date, LIS is a full-fledged human language, with its own lexical, morphological, and morphosyntactic structures (Volterra 1987; Pizzuto and Corazza 1996; Pizzuto and Volterra forthcoming). A deaf child exposed to LIS as his or her native language acquires it naturally, following developmental steps comparable to those observed in hearing children acquiring spoken language. These patterns of parent-child communication are comparable to those noted among hearing parents and hearing children (Caselli et al. 1994; Capirci, Montanari, and Volterra 1998). Research findings also suggest that native knowledge of LIS may favor the development of deaf children 's spoken language abilities, especially if they are exposed to language education programs that include the use of signs (Caselli et al. 1994). In Italy...