WORD LEARNING STRATEGIES OF YOUNG DEAF CHILDREN

AmyR Lederberg, Amy K. Prezbindowski, &Pa&i&E. Spencer

Department of Educational Psychology of Special Education, Georgia State University, Atlanta, GA 30303

In typically-developing &&hen, there seems to be a change in vocabulary development during the second year of life. Initial word acquisition is slow and dehl’berate, occurring only after the child hears a word many times. Then, coinciding with a ‘%ocabulary explosion”, children become capable of “fast mapping” or quickly forming an initial representation of a word afler hearing it only a few times. In addition, toddlers develop a strategy (called the N3C) which allows them to infer that a novel word most likely refers to something they do not have a name for. The goal of the present study was to investigate word learning skills of deaf children. Deafchiklren of hearing parents typically grow up in a language-deprived environment and are severely language- delayed. EJased on research with hearing children we hypothesized that acquisition of these word learning skills would be related to the size of the chiklren’s vocabulary not their age. In addition, because many deafchildren live in a world where everything does not have a name (either because adults do not have the sign skill to label everything; or because their auditory abilities make many words sound alike), they may be very slow in developing the N3C. We, therefore, hypothesizd that deaf&&hen woukl develop the N3C at a later point in their vocabulary devebpment than is

typical

Seventeen deafchil~ ranging in age from 38 to 82 months, were admimstered two tasks to assess their word learning skills. The “fast-mapping” task was designed to indicate ifthe chikl was able to learn a new word after only three exposures to the word. During this task, new words were taught to the chiklren by ostensively labeling a new object with a novel word/sign three times. During the “N3C” task, children were asked to select a referent fbr a novel word (without any ostensive definition of the word) from 5 objects, four of which the children aheady have a label for and one novel object. children who have the N3C strategy should know that the novel word refers to the novel object. Children were credited with having learned a word by selecting the correct referent for the word on two trials (an exposure and a generahzation trial). Childrenwereclass~asfsstI13appersorashavingtfteN3Cifthey~twooutofthefour words in the appropriate task. The children’s teachers also completed the CDL

Two children with the lowest vocabularies (&66 words) did not consistently learn words ineithertask(~~theywereabletoselectfamiliawordscorrectJy).FivechiMrenwitha higher vocab&ry (M=153 words) were able to fast map but did not use the N3C. Ten chiklren with the highest vocabulary a=323 words) were able to fast map and use the N3C.

These results suggest that these word leaming skills develop, though at a much slower rate, in deafchildren despite their very diEkent language leaming emGrow.