A Study of the Relationship Between Syntactic Development and Concrete Operations in Deaf Children

The linguistic and cognitive skills of 59 severe-to-profound and profoundly deaf children between the ages of 7 and 15 were examined. Students were administered a test of syntactic comprehension and four Piagetian operational tasks in the areas of conservation, classification, seriation, and numeration. Operational deaf children performed better than non-operational deaf children on the test of syntactic comprehension. Students whose parents consistently signed to them showed greater syntactic comprehension than did students whose parents signed less consistently. Children with more consistent sign language exposure at home also tended to have more advanced operational skills, though not to a statistically significant degree.