<abstract xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"><p>The aim of this paper is to show shifts in the language development of deaf and hard of hearing children over the last 30 years. The paper presents an overview of Western and Polish studies on education and language development in deaf children in terms of psycholinguistics. Perceptions of the perceptual and cognitive capabilities of such children must be subject to revision and continual methodological reflection due to rapidly changing variables, such as technological progress, social and cultural conditions of primary socialization and the aims of deaf education. Now that an increasing number of deaf children undergo cochlear implantation, and digital hearing aids can provide 70-75 dB of gain, thus enabling the children to spontaneously develop speech, many of them function in a bimodal environment of the sign and the speech. However, they perform at different levels of educational and developmental success. This paper elucidates the issues of language flexibility in and heterogenization of children using hearing aids or implants on a daily basis.</p></abstract>

The aim of this paper is to show shifts in the language development of deaf and hard of hearing children over the last 30 years. The paper presents an overview of Western and Polish studies on education and language development in deaf children in terms of psycholinguistics. Perceptions of the perceptual and cognitive capabilities of such children must be subject to revision and continual methodological reflection due to rapidly changing variables, such as technological progress, social and cultural conditions of primary socialization and the aims of deaf education. Now that an increasing number of deaf children undergo cochlear implantation, and digital hearing aids can provide 70-75 dB of gain, thus enabling the children to spontaneously develop speech, many of them function in a bimodal environment of the sign and the speech. However, they perform at different levels of educational and developmental success. This paper elucidates the issues of language flexibility in and heterogenization of children using hearing aids or implants on a daily basis.

From Sign Language to Spoken Language? A New Discourse of Language Development in Deaf Children

SWPS University of Social Sciences and Humanities

Psychology of Language and Communication

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 License.

The aim of this paper is to show shifts in the language development of deaf and hard of hearing children over the last 30 years. The paper presents an overview...

From Sign Language to Spoken Language? A New Discourse of Language Development in Deaf Children

Published Online: Apr 29, 2019

Page range: 48 - 84

DOI: https://doi.org/10.2478/plc-2019-0004

Keywords
cochlear implants, hearing aids, language development, sign language, spoken language

© 2019 Piotr Tomaszewski et al., published by Sciendo

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 License.

From Sign Language to Spoken Language? A New Discourse of Language Development in Deaf Children

Published Online: Apr 29, 2019

Page range: 48 - 84

DOI: https://doi.org/10.2478/plc-2019-0004

Keywordscochlear implants, hearing aids, language development, sign language, spoken language

© 2019 Piotr Tomaszewski et al., published by Sciendo

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 License.

Keywords
cochlear implants, hearing aids, language development, sign language, spoken language