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According to literature, what critical period effects are there, linguistic and cognitive, for deaf children who are
exposed to their L1 late? This video is targeted at a general audience especially Deaf and hearing parents.
All Deaf children need early exposure and access to their natural language. Language acquisition during the
critical period takes place from birth to puberty. In that age range, the window to language acquisition is wide open.
The brain is busy absorbing language and information. As for those late-exposed Deaf children who did not have any
opportunity to learn language early, they end up struggling with phonological developments later in their lives.
What is phonology? It is a study of the smallest contrastive units such as handshape, movement, location, orientation and
nonmanual signals. For those who were exposed to language late experienced delayed phonological developments which
had cascading effects on other levels of language processing. For example, they would have problems with decoding,
sign recognition, memorizing and complicated linguistic structures. I will discuss three studies about these issues.
The first research, done by Mayberry (2002), studied three distinct groups and how they understood English. The groups
are Deaf and native ASL users of Deaf parents, hearing immigrants who are studying English as their second language,
and late-exposed Deaf of hearing parents. The results showed native Deaf ASL users of Deaf parents and hearing immigrants
scored higher than those late-exposed Deaf. This happened because the first group and second group learned their mother
tongue, or first language (L1) before learning English as their second language (L2) while the third group remained in the dark
during the early stages of their lives. The second research, pursued by Morford and Mayberry (2002), searched for reasons behind the
struggles of oral-dominated Deaf children. They missed three vital points during the critical period which are motherese, phonological
analysis and crucial language. Motherese is very important as this requires the provider to know how to communicate with Deaf
children by holding their attention, making wider signs in repetitive motions and maintaining a strong eye contact. Phonological analysis
is a process where the Deaf child learns to recognize the phonological structure such as handshape or location before understanding the
segmental structure. Crucial language “practices” babbling and repetitive movements that continuously gains voluntary motor control
over various body parts. Thus the answer to the question raised by Mayberry and Morford, oral-dominated Deaf children miss out on
these important aspects of the language acquisition. Late-exposed deaf children do not have the luxury of naturally focusing on the sign
itself. The third research, done by Morgan and Kegl (2006), showed the delay in the language acquisition also had an impact on cognitive
development. Late-exposed Deaf children are delayed in the Theory of Mind (ToM) development. For example, the normal ToM develop-
ment depends on good language skills, and the ability to understand mental state words while conversing with parents. Those late-exposed
Deaf individuals struggled with understanding mental state words and different perspectives. Those studies deliver several strong evidences
that the delay of the language acquisition impacts both linguistic and cognitive developments. All individuals with a solid L1 foundation
will benefit their second language acquisition. The language acquisition is connected to the brain maturation. The plasticity of the brain ends
when the window closes. Give your child the best chance, sign with them early!