Issues Unresolved: New Perspectives on Language and Deaf Education

3. Assessing Cognitive, Relational, and Language Abilities of Deaf Preschoolers in Italy

Assessing Cognitive, Relational, and Language Abilities of Deaf Preschoolers in Italy Elena Pizzuto, M. Cristina Caselli, Barbara Ardito, Teresa Ossella, Anna Albertoni, Benedetto Santarelli, and Rossana Cafasso 3 AN APPROPRIATE evaluation of deaf children's cognitive, relational, and language abilities must take into account the child's family environment and, in particular, whether his or her parents are deaf or hearing. Children can naturally communicate with their deaf parents through their native sign language . Hearing parents communicate with their children primarily through spoken language, and these children may use some form of manual communication only in particular contexts. The family environment can significantly influence not only the children's sign and/or spoken language abilities , but also the overall patterns of cognitive and relational development. Very little information is currently available on Italian deaf preschoolers and their families (Caselli, Maragna, Pagliari Rampelli, and Volterra 1994). The few studies conducted to date either focused only on deaf children's spoken language abilities (Emiliani, Baldo, Tragni, and McKee 1994) or they considered separately-and with different assessment procedures-children 's skills in sign or speech (Caselli et a1. 1994). The main objective of this study was to provide information on cognitive and linguistic abilities in Italian deaf preschoolers, after conducting comparable assessment for both sign and speech, and to explore family patterns relevant to a clearer understanding of these children's development. This study was part of a broader research project, conducted in collaboration with the Vatican Pediatric Hospital , Ospedale Bambino Cesu, in Rome (Ossella, Ardito, Bianchi, Gentile, Luchenti, Tieri, Caselli, Pizzuto, Bosi, and Cafasso 1994), which explored several aspects of deaf children's cognitive, communicative-relational, and language abilities in different structured and natural contexts and clarified whether or how these abilities were related to the children's family (deaf versus hearing), native language (signed versus spoken), and educational Portions of the data and observations reported are reprinted by permission from E. Pizzuto, B.Ardito, M. C. Caselli, T. Ossella, A. Albertoni, M. L. Perea Costa, and B. Santarelli (in press). 41 42 E. PIZZUTO ET AL. environments. A key element of this project was the involvement of deaf coworkers-all native signers of Italian Sign Language (LIS)-at almost all stages in the planning and execution of the research. LIS interpreters also played a very important role: they allowed appropriate communicative and linguistic interactions between the participating deaf families and three hearing investigators who had little knowledge of LIS. METHOD Subjects Eleven profoundly deaf children (from 3;11 to 5;11 years) were the subjects of this study. Five had deaf parents (DD); six had hearing parents (DIH). 'Table 3.1 summarizes the most relevant information about these children: language at home, education in spoken language, school attended, degree and type of deafness, and the children's ages when diagnosed and at the onset of hearing aid use. An asterisk following a child's name (e.g., Moira*) indicates DD children. Note that although only five DD children were ex- "posed primarily to LIS, three DH children had some exposure to signs 'within the context of bimodal education. Procedure 'T11e children and their parents participated in three videotaped observationevaluation sessions that took place at our laboratory over a three-week period . A team of hearing and deaf (native LIS signers) observers/testers/interviewers observed, tested, or interviewed each child and parental couple individually. Interactions took place in spoken Italian or LIS, depending on the context, with the help of LIS interpreters when needed (see Table 3.2). The team used the following nonverbal tests to assess the children's cognitive and visual-spatial abilities: • Visual-Motor Integration Test (VMI) (Beery 1989) • Corsi's Spatial Memory Test (Corsi 1972) • Immediate Visual Memory Test (IVM) (Orsini, Grossi, Capitani, Laiacona, Papagno, and Vallar 1987) • Leiter International Performance Scale (LIPS) (Leiter 1980) • Draw-a-Man Test (Polacek and Carli 1977) The team also examined the children's communicative and linguistic skills in different spontaneous and structured contexts, which are SUID,marized in Table 3.2. This chapter focuses only on the children's performance i11 two receptive language tasks: the Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test, form B (PPVT-B) (Dunn and Dunn 1981) and a reduced and adapted version of an Italian sentence comprehension test called TCGB (Chilosi and Cipriani Table 3.1. A Summary Description of the Study's Subjects Mara* F 3;11 LIS, 551, Ital. Andrea* M 4;1 LIS...