ON THE NATURE OF LANGUAGE FROM THE PERSPECTIVE OF RESEARCH WITH PROFOUNDLY DEAF CHILDREN

H. G. Furth Departmenr of Psychology

The Catholic University of America Washington, D. C . 20064

This presentation should fit well into current interest in investigating the pre- linguistic determinants of a child’s speech, and it expands some specific points about the communicative function in general to which previous and subsequent speakers refer. Indeed, the principal message I would like to convey derives clearly from research results with deaf children. It is the overriding fact that many impor- tant, if not all, aspects that go under the name of linguistic universals are not uniquely peculiar to language; rather, they are characteristic of the development of human cognition and communication in general. I hasten to add that this perspec- tive in no way diminishes the value of linguistic research; it merely stresses that the source of cognition and communication must be searched for in roots deeper than those in the verbal language of society, since the use of this language is itself de- pendent on the development of these more general human capacities.

Above all, if we claim to be behavioral scientists, we cannot continue using a terminology that is as ambiguous as many words in ordinary language. We owe it to ourselves and to the public to adhere to a circumscribed use of words. If we include in our presentation words like language, speech, communication, symbols, representations, cognition, learning, etc., we must first decide in what sense these words are understood by us, and then keep religiously to this preliminary taxon- omy. One author, for example, may elect to include in the meaning of “language” what others call “speech” and “communication.” In this case the three words be- come interchangeable, and to refer to the relationship between communication and language would be meaningless. Another may extend the connotation of the word language to any kind of representational thinking, in which case the phrase “thinking without language” becomes absolutely senseless, as would, for that matter, any investigation into the relation of thinking and language.

Further, our human capacity to shift subtly the meaning of words within an argument is quite uncanny and needs constant scrutiny. I have proposed that many profoundly deaf youngsters have no knowledge of language; they d o not know the language of society, e.g., English, in any adequate sense, or the so-called “Sign language” of the deaf community of which they are not yet a part; therefore, they provide a unique opportunity to observe what, if any, influence the absence of a language has on the development of intelligent thinking. Even those who readily accept this premise frequently reject my conclusion on the ground that these deaf children may have acquired a different language, a mysterious “inner language,” through which their thinking develops. These persons can therefore still reasonably continue to hold and to act on the assumption that language is of primary impor- tance in the development of thinking.

This is a curious way of shifting the meaning of the word “language.” When re- searchers or teachers propose that language importantly affects thinking, they understand by “language” a quite precise and circumscribed knowledge and be- havior, namely, the use of the English language. They d o not include in it the use of

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spontaneous gestures or images or the intelligent handling of a concrete situation. But when it comes t o deaf children, they suddenly extend the meaning of language to include all these extralinguistic behaviors, so that they can reject the logical con- clusion t o which a narrow definition of the word ‘‘language’’ could have forced them. And then, completing the cycle, they quite readily return to the narrow defi- nition when they talk about language interacting with and furthering the intelli- gence of a child.

When I characterize deaf children as having no language, I use the word “language” in the narrow-but quite usual-sense of knowing; that is, of having a developed competence in the conventional symbol system of society through which its mem- bers communicate their everyday experiences. This definition would accept the gestural sign language of the deaf community as a language, but the overwhelming majority of deaf children are born to hearing parents and, a t least until recently, are kept away from contact with signing deaf adults; a t the same time, these deaf children are barely able to comprehend and express the simplest syntax of English. While they therefore d o not have a conventional language, they can be observed to symbolize, communicate, memorize, and think. In fact, this is the main theme I want t o present: if these children d o acquire symbols, communication, intelligence, personality, it cannot be due to the external influence of a language society. Rather, it is due to the spontaneous development of their persons, a development that is much more than language can provide, whether one considers this from a n empiri- cal or theoretical evolutionary perspective.

I shall present my theme in three points. First, I will discuss and interpret psy- chological research on the development of profoundly deaf children. Second, I will consider the communication and language of deaf children and adults. Last, I will present some theoretical and practical conclusions derived from the evidence presented earlier.

DEVELOPMENT OF DEAF CHILDREN

This brief summary of research with deaf persons primarily pertains to intellectual functioning, but a few words will also be said about their social and emotional development. From a wide variety of more than 100 separate investigations, there is as yet no evidence whatsoever that languagedeprived deaf children have any overall or any specific cognitive deficit that justifiably could be attributed to their specific linguistic deficit.

We are familiar with the range of individual differences observed in practically all types of behavior. Even where we cannot adequately measure the range of possible performances, we have a reasonable clear picture of what is considered typical and what is definitely atypical. The linguistic deficit of deaf children is not within the normal range of knowing a language. They are deficient in a sense that is quite different from that in which they may be called deficient in a particular classificatory problem because it could have taken them a n average of 38 trials to reach a criterion whereas hearing children acquired the criterion on a n average of 32 trials. When we say two groups are different, we often fail to acknowledge the immense area of com- munality that is tacitly presupposed. For example, in this hypothetical case of classi- fication, both the hearing and deaf children had in common eventual success on classification, and there was a large overlap between the distributions of scores in the two groups. By contrast, the difference between the two groups in the knowledge of a language is almost absolute: on the one hand, a comfortable being a t home in a language that is constantly used for all kinds of purposes, and on the other hand a meager knowledge of a few words and a few simple sentence constructions.

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Consider the evidence. There are a few studies in which developmental differences were observed, deaf children showing a slight lag in comparison with hearing children, but the majority of studies did not yield any differences whatsoever. Regarding the first group of studies, one can point out that the poorer performance of deaf children falls fully within the range of hearing children. In other words, there are many groups of hearing children who perform comparably to deaf children such as children from different environments or cultures. But these hearing children certainly have language, and one cannot therefore clearly link the lowered performance to language. I suggest that a n occasional lowered performance of deaf children can be readily attributed to slight environmental disadvantages that are only quite indirectly, if a t all, related to language. These are disadvantages that spring from an inadequate or inappropriate emotional acceptance of the disability on the part of parents, or of a n educational program that constantly stresses what is weakest in the child and neglects intellectually challenging occasions.

Studies that show no differences, however, are potentially quite clear in their inter- pretation; knowledge of a language cannot be a necessary or even facilitative influence in the emergence of these behaviors. The areas studied were quite diverse, such as rule learning, discrimination, and classification tasks, combinatorial and probability thinking, spatial concepts, logical symbols, memory recall, and some Piagetian conservation problems. There is just no evidence of any clear-cut deficit in any specific intelligent behavior that could be empirically and theoretically related to the clear-cut deficit in knowledge of a language.

When one considers the linguistic ignorance of young deaf children, it seems plausible to expect social and emotional deficiences in these children, even more than intellectual defects. However, one is again struck by the basic similarity of individual differences that fall fully within the normal developmental range. One observes disturbances similar to those of hearing children. The percentage of severe psychoses is certainly not greater. When it comes to neuroses and adjustment disorders, data are so poor and definitions so differently determined by prevailing cultural biases that it is very hard to reach any firm conclusions.

COMMUNICATION AND LANGUAGE IN DEAF PERSONS

Turning now from the personality and intelligence of deaf children to their language and communication, it is apparent that-unless prohibited by a quite unusual environment-all deaf children spontaneously use gestures and pantomime for the purpose of communication. Careful observations of these gestures demonstrate that they are used and function analogously to what is often called “linguistic universals.” Developmental stages described in connection with verbal language can be found in the use of these gestures. For example, a t first the gestures point to present objects; later on, they refer to absent objects or events. An even more important insight comes from ongoing research that looks for grammatical rules that deaf children adopt in their spontaneous gestures, rules that cannot possibly be related t o a n outside model, since no gesture language is used in those particular deaf children’s environment. This evidence is, of course, germane to much current research on the prelinguistic roots of human communication. The presence of pro- foundly deaf children without the benefit of acquiring the verbal language of the hearing society or the visual language of the deaf society allows us to extend this study of human communication far beyond the prelinguistic period, yet without having to worry about the potential contamination of our data and theories on communica- tive development by the learning and modeling from the language of the social environment.

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Concerning the Sign language of American deaf adults, it is quite remarkable and symptomatic of a deep-seated prejudice, which is only slowly disappearing, that a serious investigation into the nature of this language has only recently been attempted. Previously, one only looked at signing in order to compare it unfavor- ably to the spoken language and relegate it to a lower form of animal communica- tion. Suffice it to point out that today nobody would seriously suggest that the Sign language as used by deaf persons is not truly a human language, even though one can still argue whether or not the chimpanzee Washoe has acquired the use of human language.

Why is the learning of the English language so difficult for deaf children? Is it because their first way of communicating by spontaneously developed gestures is not a fully articulated conventional symbol system, and in its medium is so radically different, that learning English is not like learning a second language? By contrast, as the deaf adolescents come in contact with deaf adults who use the Sign language, they unfailingly acquire it, even though they are at an age far beyond the normal age of first-language acquisition. Moreover, if the spoken language of a society, such as English, were a system with clear logical rules of semantics and syntax, deaf children would be able to learn it easily. They have no difficulties with logic or intelligent reasoning. Unfortunately, language and logic overlap only to a limited degree. Remenber also that many attempts have been made to teach English to deaf children according to a planned curriculum. These attempts have not been overly fruitful, and the teaching of language to deaf children today remains what it has always been, an unpredictable endeavour that is educationally extremely challenging, with a few mysterious successes and many more dismal failures. Our past psychological under- standing of language acquisition has been of no appreciable benefit to the teaching of English to deaf children. However, it is my fond hope that the more radical insights gleaned from the observation of deaf children’s spontaneous communication and intelligent development could lead to an educational environment for deaf children that would promise a greater likelihood of teaching the verbal language of society.

CONCLUSIONS

From the foregoing we can draw some theoretical and practical conclusions. First of all, one can, and it seems to me one must, distinguish very clearly between intelligence and conventional language. Many deaf children are intelligent persons who do not have a language, if language is taken to be the knowledge of an overall communication system of a society. Moreover, if one accepts the primacy of thinking vis-a-vis language, this has to be understood in a framework where symbolization is regarded as a spontaneous psychological consequence of an intellectual development that has proceeded beyond practical regulations to the threshold of theoretical think- ing. At this point symbolization becomes the means for making present what is absent, that is, “representation.” All symbols are representation and refer directly to the person’s theoretical knowledge. Some symbols are external, such as play or gestures, some are internalized, such as internal movements or images. In this framework speech is a system of symbolization that the child acquires and uses analogous to the way he or she acquires and uses other symbols such as gestures and imagery. Such a perspective-and you realize this is effectively a summary of Piaget’s theory-turns our usual view in these matters upside down. Instead of taking language as primary in intellectual development and inferring mind from language, we posit intelligence as primary and then derive representation from it and finally acknowledge speech and language as symbolic behavior that functions as other symbols do.

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If this position on language and intelligent thinking is considered a n extreme against a moderate, middle view that stresses the contributions and interaction of both intelligence and language, this can be due only to a misunderstanding of the words. It is no more reasonable to treat language and intelligence as two inde- pendent modalities that interact than it is to propose that life and the nuclear family relations interact in the growth of a person. More precisely, one can conceive of intelligence without language, but not of language without intelligence.

Roger Brown, who certainly cannot be accused of neglecting language, remarked in his recent book, A First Language, that next to nothing is known about what language has done for thought, and he continues, “we cannot even be sure that language has importantly affected the power of thought” (p. 38). He cites one solitary empirical finding for the proposition that language aids cognition; namely, the use of labels as a technique for extending short-term memory. He admits that this is a com- paratively unimportant cognitive strategy: “It did not get us to the moon.” In spite of this minimal yield from a field that has been labored over and harvested continuously since the days of the Whorfian Hypothesis and Skinner’s Verbal Learning, Brown still does not abandon the plow, and speculates that “possibly very much more important reasoning processes are dependent on sentence construction, and especially the powerful processes of embedding and coordination.” He believes that no one has even attempted to determine whether this is true. On this point, 1 think he is wrong. Those who have studied deaf persons have done so in the expectation of verifying these speculations. But these expectations were not confirmed. We have observed deaf adolescents who cannot construct embedded sentences but who show understanding of logical connectives, so that, for example, they distinguish a disjunc- tion of two negations from a negated disjunction of two assertions. I fail to see how one can disregard these empirical results for the benefit of an inadequate theoretical position.

Quite rightly, Brown emphasizes the communicative social function of language. There is ample empirical evidence that many aspects of social behavior are peculiarly tied to language and speech even though they are grounded in a more general symbolic and communicative capacity. Quite probably, language has evolved for the purpose of persuasion, rhetoric, war-making, poetry, myth, religion, politics, and power over persons. That is what language is for. The hearing child will use it in the service of these functions. If the child does not use language, this is usually an indication that there is something wrong with his or her social-emotional develop- ment. But even here, it is not language that is a t the base of these developments; rather, it is language behavior which indicates these developments. Deaf children without language also acquire adequate social-emotional skills.

Finally, as a practical conclusion in this all too compressed presentation, I would urge that we d o not distort the evolutionary biological function of language by prematurely stressing the role of language in intelligent thinking. According to Piaget’s theory, language in itself is a n inappropriate medium for stimulating intellectual development as long as the child has not yet acquired formal thinking structures. In other words, in order to use language in a n intelligent challenging way and nourish intelligence through the verbal medium, one needs a n intelligence that has developed to the stage which Piaget calls formal thinking. These structures begin to develop around twelve t o fourteen years of age, certainly not much earlier.

If our educational institutions and rehabilitation efforts misconstrue the role of language and unwisely apply language skills a t a n early age-level, we are bound to starve the child intellectually, since a child’s intelligence is not yet capable of being challenged by language itself. Put differently, a child’s intelligence is miles ahead of

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what he or she can verbalize. It is hard enough for us adults to put into language what we think and expand our thinking through the verbal medium; but we can, a t least with assiduous efforts. But the average eight-year-old child does not have this capacity to be challenged by language, and in stressing language and reading, we cannot thereby nourish this child’s high-level intelligence.

Qutie frankly, our educational philosophy, with its undue emphasis on reading, writing, and other verbal learning in the primary school, is pathogenic as far as intellectual health is concerned, As long as we continue with this philosophy, we are going to have what has been called “the current epidemic of learning disabilities.” This is a cruel misnomer; it should rather be called “schooling disability,” that is, the child’s school failure is symptomatic of a serious defect in our schools, not in the child. I wish we experts in psychology and education would have the conviction and the courage to tell society that in order to avoid learning failures, we have to change the school system rather than engage in a fruitless effort to prepare and innoculate particular children against a learning system that is basically unhealthy. We need schools that give ample scope for the development of the children’s capacities t o understand the various facets of reality in which they live. To acquire language, t o speak intelligently, to read-all these and other desirable acquisitions have much more t o d o with developing a certain understanding than with learning and memorizing a certain content or information.

It simply is not true that educational systems have ever given thinking a fair chance. I would not deny that programs exist that foster some aspects conducive to the child’s developing intelligence. But what is needed is a n all-out effort to provide opportunities for all children in the primary school to engage in challenging intellectual activities appropriate for their ages. This would not mean curricula to teach thinking, since in my perspective, thinking is not something that is taught or learned; it is something the child himself or herself must do and develop. If we had this type of early education, we would find that many so-called learning disabilities or specific reading and language deficiencies would disappear. Such a socially therapeutic outcome would indeed be a most desirable confirmation of a theoretical perspective on language and intellectual development that derives directly from the evidence of psychological studies with profoundly deaf children.