Talk:Language acquisition by deaf children

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This article is or was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment in Spring 2018. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): A14costa, Easmith5, AmyTai. Peer reviewers: Jaxanderson, Dnalves1990, Adrisheh.

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This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 22 January 2020 and 9 May 2020. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): DeaflyHallows.

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Lack of citations

• This article has a long list of references at the end, but no citation links tying them to the text to which they are meant to apply. There is a need for someone to do enough research to create the citations./Bruce/ [aka Slasher] 08:25, 9 August 2015 (UTC)

I added a new intro paragraph that includes citations for each sentence with specific pages in the articles referenced. Shane.blau (talk) 17:05, 24 March 2018 (UTC)

Language deprivation

Deaf children often experience language deprivation due to lack of language access. This excerpt should be added in the section regarding ethics and language acquisition."Arbottoms (talk) 14:00, 6 February 2017 (UTC)

Children of deaf vs hearing parents

There is more information on Deaf children born to deaf parents than born to hearing parents. Both populations should be reflected equally.Arbottoms (talk) 14:00, 6 February 2017 (UTC)

Cochlear implants

The "Concluding thought" section notes that there is controversy and debate regarding the effectiveness of cochlear implants, yet the article does not touch on the true nature of the controversy. The article notes only the debate related to age of implantation, when there is actually another side to the debate based on research that finds that children who are implanted and have no or limited exposure to ASL are more at risk for language deprivation than those who have access to language from birth. This is a biased conclusion to make, asserting that Deaf children are better off being implanted and learning ASL. Easmith5 (talk) 18:39, 30 January 2018 (UTC)

Under the "Cochlear Implant" section the author refers to the debate of CIs in the "Deaf World," again, this is a title that is incorrect. It should be referred to as the Deaf Community. Little detail is provided about this said debate. It also states that if implanted early enough, Deaf children can attain clear, spoken language. Again, this statement is not cited and in fact is not always true. This statement needs to be considered carefully. A14costa (talk) 22:58, 4 February 2018 (UTC)

Finally, the "Concluding Thoughts" section seems biased towards spoken language and CIs. The author again states that a Deaf child with a CI can have an increase in linguistic and communicative abilities. Although this can sometimes be the case, it's not always true. There needs to be sufficent evidence included with this statement and article as a whole. A14costa (talk) 22:58, 4 February 2018 (UTC)

@Easmith5 and A14costa: Please see #Section 'Concluding thought' moved here below. If you have thoughts on how to improve that section, feel free in that section, but don't feel like you have to; I'd rather that section die a peaceful death. Mathglot (talk) 06:46, 15 February 2018 (UTC)

Critical period

The article lacks information regarding the importance of the critical period for language acquisition for Deaf children. In addition, there is no mention of developmental milestones in terms of language acquisition for Deaf children. Easmith5 (talk) 18:39, 30 January 2018 (UTC)

MCE is not a language

The article presents Manually Coded English (MCE) as language in the language acquisition section, when really MCE is a communication system not a language. In addition, the article asserts that MCE allows for smoother and easier communication between Deaf and hearing individuals with no reference. Easmith5 (talk) 18:39, 30 January 2018 (UTC)

I found a PowerPoint about MCE and I thought of sharing with you. I will post link in this section so you can review and at the end of the slide you will some sources. I would like you to expand more about MCE from my suggestion that I found. Thank you Dnalves1990 (talk) 15:27, 18 March 2018 (UTC)

References

Section Deaf children and reading

The "deaf children and reading" section of this article lacks proficient evidence supporting how Deaf children learn to read. In fact, this article seems to be biased towards spoken and sign language as the best means of teaching a Deaf child to read. This article continues to cite "Meadow" for its findings, but it's the only piece of "evidence" that is cited. The line "at birth, Deaf children are deficient in both" is derogatory towards Deaf children. Neither hearing children nor Deaf children know how to map language to the written word at birth, so it's odd that this was included as evidence. This article also mentions MCE as a language, but in reality, it is a communication system (which explains why Deaf children using it did not advance in the English language. This section also continuously compares reading abilities of hearing children to Deaf children, but again, cites no evidence supporting either side. A14costa (talk) 22:58, 4 February 2018 (UTC)

Lack of Citations and Implied Biases

Many claims lack citations altogether - there are only three in the entire article - for example the claims that Deaf mothers communicate less frequently than hearing mothers, that 90% of deaf children are born to hearing parents (this statistic is also contentious), the entire MCE section, and the entire reading section. Uncited claims should be either cited or removed. Goldin-Meadow is also named in the reading section, but there's no accompanying citation to indicate what specific article. The claim that most children receiving CIs before 18 months acquire spoken language at a rate similar to hearing peers is particularly troubling.

The "Concluding Thoughts" section represents an attempt at persuasion by an editor, and should be reframed to citable claims or removed. The phrase claiming that deaf children, specifically, are born inherently deficient in both language familiarity and mapping language to print both lacks citation and seems to carry bias, as hearing infants are born with the same capacity for language as their deaf peers. I would encourage this phrase to be both cited and taken in light of the circumstances that all infants are born into, rather than phrased as a specifically deaf phenomenon. Ms3630 (talk) 02:10, 6 February 2018 (UTC)

The whole article is a huge mess, and large sections of it need to be challenged. Ms3630, that one sentence you mentioned needs to go, and you're welcome to go ahead and remove it. The worst that can happen is that you'll be reverted and have to justify it here (see WP:BRD), but I'll back you up. So go ahead and get rid of it; please do use the edit summary when you do so, to give a few words of explanation. Mathglot (talk) 02:28, 6 February 2018 (UTC)

Agreed, I've added a couple of sources to balance the bias towards manual language, but there's so much generalization about "deaf children" here that there's very little value that can be gathered from the information. For example, research that discusses language outcomes of deaf children who grow up with parents who use sign language natively is used to generalize statements about all deaf children, while deaf children who grow up without sign language models in the home, but with cochlear implants and spoken-language therapies tend to meet the language milestones of their hearing peers. I've added some of that information, but it's hard to remove the bias without removing the citations (which are useful for, say, parents who are fluent signers). Kerri9494 (talk) 16:44, 14 May 2018 (UTC)

Section 'Concluding thought' moved here

I've moved section Concluding thought here, pending resolution of some issues:

• section is unreferenced.
• written like a personal reflection or opinion essay that states a Wikipedia editor's personal feelings about a topic.
• written like a how-to or guide: e.g., parents must be supportive in helping to..., or: Parents should look at...

copy of section Concluding thought moved here from article

Concluding thought Although there is a highly controversial debate in the Deaf Community regarding the use of Cochlear Implants in Deaf children, there is no solid concluding evidence that Cochlear Implants always work to improve spoken language and linguistic function. Although this option may work for some children, it by no means works for every single child. There is also evidence however, to suggest that teaching a Deaf child American Sign Language from birth to five years old can allow children to have English proficiency equivalent to their hearing peers as compared to Deaf children without this access to ASL (Cummins, 2006). The main conclusion is no matter which option a parent chooses for their Deaf child, whether it be a Cochlear Implant or ASL, parents must be supportive in helping to develop their child's language acquisition skills from birth. This will guarantee language success in the long run. Parents should look at all options before making a final decision.

If you have an interest in working on this section, please propose changes here before re-adding it to the article in or near its current state. Mathglot (talk) 05:03, 11 February 2018 (UTC)

Title of the article

As pointed out previously, the title is misleading because the article only focuses on children in the US and mostly on sign language acquisition. The title should be revised to more accurately reflect the content and/or the article needs to be significantly expanded to cover a broader range of topics. Shane.blau (talk) 16:03, 7 March 2018 (UTC)

I've added globalization templates to the top of the article and to relevant sections to address this concern. Kerri9494 (talk) 16:39, 14 May 2018 (UTC)

I would like to know more about the globalization template. I cannot find it either on the article's page or the talk page.

The following are my recommendations regarding globalizing this article:

• except where an example only applies to ASL, change uses of "ASL" to "signed language(s)". I
• except where an example only applies to English, change uses of "English" to "spoken language(s)" or "written language(s)". This change needs careful editing to make sure the choice makes sense for the context.

BatArieh (talk) 20:58, 24 October 2022 (UTC)

Methods section

I don't think this section belongs under language acquisition. Methods here relate to educational approaches, probably would fit better under the Deaf education article. It would be more appropriate to have a section in this article on visual language development and oral language development. I agree with Easmith5 that MCE should not be categorized as a language. Shane.blau (talk) 16:03, 7 March 2018 (UTC)

Total Communicaton

Apparently, there is already a link on Wikipedia in regards to total communications. You could utilize that link to connect to your article and/or point of reference for additional information.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Total_Communication

Hope this helps! — Preceding unsigned comment added by Srgibbs (talk • contribs) 19:43, 15 March 2018 (UTC)

David's peer review

I found a PowerPoint about MCE and I thought of sharing with you. I will post link in this section so you can review and at the end of the slide you will some sources. I would like you to expand more about MCE from my suggestion that I found. Thank you. Dnalves1990 (talk) 15:38, 18 March 2018 (UTC)

References

New intro paragraph

I have added a new intro paragraph that I believe addresses several of the concerns on this discussion. It discusses both signed and spoken language acquisition, is cited throughout with specific articles and page numbers, and includes international research and information that applies to all deaf infants, not just those in the US. Open to any feedback and suggestions. I'm not sure what I should do with the current intro paragraph. Shane.blau (talk) 17:16, 24 March 2018 (UTC)

Shane, Your new paragraph looks good, only it's not in the right place. The lead of an article summarizes the body, it does not include any unique or new information not already covered in the body. (That's also why you see many leads with no references at all; this is okay, because everything in the lead is already covered lowered down, where it is also sourced; so there's no need to duplicate sources in the lead for material that is a summary of content already sourced in the body.)

Please move your new paragraph into the body somewhere (you may have to create a new section for it, or even distribute it into different sections) and then you may add a brief section to the lead, summarizing the new information. Cordially, Mathglot (talk) 10:15, 25 March 2018 (UTC)

Thanks for the advice! I moved the paragraph to the "Role of the environment" section and adjusted the intro paragraph a bit. I rewrote the first sentence because it was only about the US and didn't follow the summary-style intro that you describe. I think the final sentence in the current intro paragraph is out of place and/or needs expanded. Shane.blau (talk) 16:57, 25 March 2018 (UTC)

Removed a sentence

I removed the following sentence: "Research shows that deaf children who listen and speak to communicate, but do not use sign language have better communication outcomes and social well-being than Deaf children who use sign language." I feel that the conclusion of the sentence doesn't fit the sources' conclusion.

The citations were to research that compared groups of deaf children, all of whom had Cochlear implants. The results of the research: children who were exposed to sign language before their implant did not acquire spoken language as well as children who were not exposed to sign language before their implant. Firstly, this does not imply that the latter group had "better communication outcomes," and secondly, even if it did, the results aren't applicable to any deaf child who has never had a Cochlear implant.

The sentence that I removed made it sound like it was applicable to all deaf children. I'm aware that sign language vs. spoken language can be a contentious issue, and I think that this bit was misleading and inaccurate. 2607:FEA8:AA20:4C9:9CA6:7FC4:7C7:5E56 (talk) 03:23, 11 March 2019 (UTC)

Combining Section 1 and Section 2

Much of the information discussed in Sections 1 and 2 felt like they overlapped in a lot of ways. The additions of Goldin-Meadow (2014)</ref>, and Newport (1990), and a read-through of Petitto & Marentette (1991), and Meier (1991) helped lead a re-organization of the first sentences of both section 1 & 2. Meier (1991) was listed under "Further Reading".

Section 1 "During the first year of life, all infants are primed to acquire information about the language in their environment. Deaf infants immersed in fluent sign language from birth develop native language skills in that sign language in the same manner as any other child acquiring a language natively."

After re-reading Meier (1991) and drawing more from this article I was able to rework the above paragraph into the following: "Human languages are either spoken or signed and infants around the world are primed to acquire information about the language in their environment with remarkable ease regardless of whether their native language assumes the vocal (spoken language) or the gestural mode (signed language)."

The first sentence of the second paragraph of section 1 has been re-worked to include information from Goldin-Meadow (2014). Inserted a new sentence from Goldin-Meadow (2014) to complement the statistics in the last sentence of the new paragraph.

"The early experience of deaf children, however, is highly variable and frequently atypical from a language acquisition perspective. More than 95% of deaf children are born to hearing, non-signing families."

Is now: "Signed languages like ASL (American Sign Language) are, however, acquired by signers of varying age and are atypical from a language acquisition perspective. For example, only 5-10% of deaf children are born to deaf signing parents in the United States. The remaining 90-95% of the signing community are deaf children born to hearing, non-signing parents/families who usually lack knowledge of signed languages and may discourage the use of a signed language in favor of spoken English.

The second sentence of Section 2 has been moved to Section 1 and broken up into two sentences. Further plans are to include a small section on theories of language development.

Sub-section titled "Deaf children born to deaf parents" moved to new sub-section "Acquisition of Signed Languages". Sub-section "Deaf children born to hearing parents" moved to new sub-section "Acquisition of Spoken language".

New organization links Section 1 back to the head section of the main article. JoeNavek (talk) 10:27, 25 October 2019 (UTC)JoeNavek

Updates

I have re-written the intro for clarity. I've also added content to the "spoken language acquisition" and "sign language acquisition sections." I also added a section called "Bilingual Language acquisition" to reflect the fact that some deaf children acquire both a sign language and a spoken language. Elanajp (talk) 20:42, 26 April 2020 (UTC)

Suggestions for removal

I recommend removing the second paragraph under "Spoken Language Acquisition". It has detailed information that is not specific to deaf children's acquisition of spoken language. Instead, linking to wikipedia Language acquisition will cover that information:

"For newborns, the earliest linguistic tasks are perceptual. Babies need to determine what basic linguistic elements are used in their native language to create words (their phonetic inventory). They also need to determine how to segment the continuous stream of language input into phrases, and eventually, words. From birth, they have an attraction to patterned linguistic input, which is evident whether the input is spoken or signed. They use their sensitive perceptual skills to acquire information about the structure of their native language, particularly prosodic and phonological features." Elanajp (talk) 21:02, 26 April 2020 (UTC)

I also recommend removing the entire "Methods" section. As was mentioned before on the Talk page, the methods section covers information related to deaf education pedagogy. While deaf education is highly related to language use and language acquisition, they are still two separate topics. Additionally (as was mentioned earlier on the Talk page) some of the "methods" are actually not languages from a linguistic perspective such as MCE and Cued Speech. These topics are certainly worthy of elaboration on wikipedia, but this article does not seem like the right place. There is a great wikipedia page on Deaf education where these topics are discussed and could be elaborated further. Elanajp (talk) 21:40, 26 April 2020 (UTC)

Regarding your suggestions:

• remove second paragraph – I'm not sure I agree with this. Section #Acquisition of spoken language is a subsection of the #Background section, which also has another subsection, called #Acquisition of signed language. Many articles have introductory, or "background" sections, to provide context or set the stage for more specific information about the topic in following sections. I would argue that for most people, a basic understanding of what's involved in spoken language acquisition is required, or at least advisable, before delving into the topic of signed language acquisition. Otoh, you're not wrong that you could just provide a link to Language acquisition (see Template:Main), but it's debatable whether that is an improvement if the introductory second paragraph would no longer be there.
• remove Methods section – I'm less sure about this one. It depends somewhat how we define the topic of the article; if it's about initial language acquisition in infancy, this would not include Cued Speech (although it possibly could include MCE, especially if both parents are hearing). Otoh, if language acquisition is read more broadly, then both of those methods could be involved, even if they started out with ASL and two deaf parents.

I notice that you've made some significant changes to the lead. I've reverted these for now. While being bold is encouraged at Wikipedia, one needs to pay attention to Wikipedia policy and guidelines when doing so. The lead is the last section you should touch, when making a group of edits to an article. In addition, I often recommend that new editors not touch the lead until they gain more experience, although there is not any kind of rule about this at Wikipedia; as long as you follow recommended editing guidelines, it's allowed. In particular, since the the lead is a summary of the article, changes to the body should be made first, and the lead should always follow changes to the body. That is, if the article needs to be changed, first change the body, and only after that's all done, should one modify the lead, to bring it into line again, as a summary of the article. (Naturally, one can change the lead alone, if it doesn't represent a valid summary of the article.) In addition, youir changes were extensive enough, that the diff program doesn't give a very good account of exactly what was changed. Afaict, among changes to the text itself, you removed two sources (Hill, 2019; Boudreault, 2003 and moved three sources down to a body section (Pfau, 2012; Hoff, 2014; Hall W., 2017). Although it's possible for the removal of relevant content backed by reliable sources to be an improvement to the article, generally speaking this has to be explained in detail in the edit summary, and normally on the Talk page as well, or you can expect someone to challenge or revert such a change. When it occurs in the LEAD, it's even more likely to be reverted if done without laying the groundwork for such a change. I think the prose in your version was an improvement, and it's possible that you could work it into the lead with some discussion here. But it should be discussed here, and it should only happen after any other changes to the body are made, first.

You also made six edits adding 8kb to the body of the article; I haven't looked at these, yet, but I will. At first glance, I can see that you added several citations and that's always a good thing. Adding User:Shalor (Wiki Ed). Mathglot (talk) 01:37, 27 April 2020 (UTC)

(add missing ping: @Elanajp:. Mathglot (talk) 01:39, 27 April 2020 (UTC)

Hi Mathglot, I understand about the lead. Perhaps, I will see about adding a few lines that I feel would make the lead better reflect the body of the article, without making wholesale changes, and certainly without removing citations. One such point would be something about the language acquisition process in deaf children being unique from that of other populations, in that it is variable in age of onset from birth/infancy to much older, and in the case of signing children of hearing parents, it is a language different from the parents' first or dominant language.

Methods section and article scope

As for the methods sections-- I see what you mean about the scope of the article. I think I had a different understanding of the scope originally. I do suggest, though, adding different headings to that section. Right now, the Methods sections is divided according to modality (speech and oral methods; signing and manual methods; hybrid methods). Instead I recommend that it be organized into languages, and communication methods. I don't think that natural sign languages such as ASL, BSL, FSL should be in the same section as MCE and Cued Speech, even though they both use the manual modality. MCE and Cued speech are not languages, rather they are primarily tools to access the English language and increase communication in general. Elanajp (talk) 13:11, 4 May 2020 (UTC)

@Elanajp: I looked at Methods section some more, and I think I see what one of the problems is, and also I believe I understand better why you wanted to remove it.

One aspect of this has to do with scope, as you mentioned. The scope of an article according to Wikipedia policy comes from its title. The policy on WP:Article titles says:

The title indicates what the article is about and distinguishes it from other articles.

Now, the title Language acquisition by deaf children doesn't actually say anything explicit about first language acquisition by deaf children, although according to the academic definition of Language acquisition, that's usually what is meant. A lot of the article is focused on first language acquisition, as it should be; the topic of language acquisition as used in academia is generally about acquisition of language as a concept, i.e, a first language (or languages, if multiple languages learned initially). However, to a casual reader, "language acquisition" might sound like it could including learning a foreign or second language, and even in academia the definition of the term is not unequivocal. Here is paragraph 5 from Language acquisition:

Language acquisition usually refers to first-language acquisition, which studies infants' acquisition of their native language, whether that be spoken language or signed language as a result of prelingual deafness, though it can also refer to bilingual first language acquisition (BFLA), which refers to an infant's simultaneous acquisition of two native languages. This is distinguished from second-language acquisition, which deals with the acquisition (in both children and adults) of additional languages.

So, before we can decide on the appropriateness of the methods section in this article, I think we need to be clear on what the focus of the article is. It is, I think you would agree, the acquisition of (first) language by deaf children. The sentence you added in rev 953326749 does that, and that was lacking in the earlier version, so good job on that. (I made it even more explicit by adding the word first there; this whole sentence needs better backing in the article body, but that's a topic for a separate discussion.)

Babies learn language automatically; they don't need "methods" if exposed to language, as hearing children invariably are. In general if there is a methods section here at all, it should be limited to any methods that are used to help deaf children learn language in general; i.e., their first language. If an aspect of deaf children learning their first language includes teaching the parents MCE, so they could sign to their infant, then that could conceivably be a "method". By definition, Cued speech only exists in the context of another language, so that can't possibly be a method for teaching a child their first language. Possibly there's so little to say about methods, that we don't need a dedicated section for it, or maybe just a very brief one.

There is one situation in (first) language acquisition, that is different between deaf and hearing children, where a "methods" section (or subsection?) might make sense, namely the case of delayed language acquisition, where a deaf child doesn't have access to a language model when they are infants, normally due to parents who cannot sign, and either never fully acquire language, or only when older, in which case actual pedagogic learning methods may be used and would be relevant to the article. This case used to be extremely common, even the rule, as few children were exposed to sign language early enough and had to pick it up later, often imperfectly (often being prohibited from using sign, further inhibiting their acquisition of language). There is almost no comparison to hearing children, as they automatically have voices all around them, and acquisition is automatic. There are, however, a few cases of hearing children raised without language, like that of Genie (feral child) in Los Angeles, or Victor of Aveyron but they are rare. A subset of that, would be hearing parents sending their deaf children to an "oral" deaf school where they attempt to teach speaking and lip reading at an early age before the children have acquired much language of any kind, perhaps just some home signs as is typical.

Is there enough here for you to work with? I think at a minimum, you could reduce the size of the section, and very possibly end up with just some brief content that could be subsumed under some other section. Mathglot (talk) 19:47, 5 May 2020 (UTC)

@Mathglot: Hi Mathglot, thanks for your comments. I agree with your interpretation of the scope being related to first language acquisition. The one caveat is deaf children who learn both spoken language and sign language from a young age, in which case they have multiple first languages. I believe I addressed that by adding a bilingual language acquisition section to the article a few weeks ago. I also agree about the importance of the scenario of extremely delayed acquisition which has little parallel in hearing children except a few extreme examples and I like the idea of linking with the Language Deprivation article that you mentioned below. For a methods section that relates to strategies for first language acquisition, some strategies for supporting language acquisition are included in the sign language acquisition and spoken language acquisition sections (such as joint attention). I don't personally have more to add to that. As for the current content of the methods section, I think I will re-organize the Cued Speech, Fingerspelling, MCE, and Hybrid sections into a section called "Alternative Communication Approaches." If people feel, as I originally suggested, that this content doesn't belong in this article, they can delete that section. I have some changes I will make to the MCE and Hybrid sections. I believe that the content of the Pedagogy section is better suited for the Sign Language Acquisition section, and the Reading section will fit better under the Academics section. Elanajp (talk) 22:01, 5 May 2020 (UTC)

@Elanajp: Sounds good to me; go for it! Adding Shalor.

(One procedural note: I've taken the liberty of adding a level of indent to your last reply. Generally speaking, when responding to a previous comment about the same issue (a "reply"), add a level of indent. When taking off in a new direction, you can break the cascading indentation and start off again flush left. For best practices on interacting with others on Talk pages, please have a look at WP:THREAD.) Mathglot (talk) 23:23, 5 May 2020 (UTC)

Changes to the lead

Hi User:Elanajp, I undid my revert of your changes to the lead (see previous section); this restores your version of the lead from 23:40, April 26, 2020. I think overall your version was an improvement, especially with the contrast of deaf children born to deaf or hearing adults, and the better placement of cochlear implants further down and in context. Although the lead can and should still be improved to better summarize the article, I think that can be done better starting from your version as a jumping-off point; but before doing so, per LEADFOLLOWSBODY, the other sections you're working on including Methods and others, should be done first. When you're done with everything else and are happy with the article body sections, *then* you can come back and adjust the lead as needed to better summarize the article. Sorry for my previous revert, and I hope you're not feeling too whipsawed by this. I'll make some comments about the other sections, which should be done first (if at all) before coming back to the lead (except for technical fixes, adjusting refs, etc.) Adding Shalor. Thanks, Mathglot (talk) 17:55, 5 May 2020 (UTC)

• Thanks Mathglot! Shalor (Wiki Ed) (talk) 20:44, 5 May 2020 (UTC)

Fixing and readding broken ping @Elanajp:. Mathglot (talk) 23:25, 5 May 2020 (UTC)

Section on language deprivation

The flip side of (first) language acquisition, is what happens when a child is deprived of a rich (i.e., normal) language learning environment. User Arbottoms (from the same class as you in 2017) already suggested that this article could benefit from a section on language deprivation, and I agree. The article Language deprivation covers this topic in full.

Since that article already exists, the ideal way to implement this here, would be following the WP:Summary style guideline, where this article is the parent article and the Language deprivation article is the child. This would mean, adding a new section to this article entitled Language acquisition by deaf children#Language deprivation, adding the {{Main}} template at the top, and then briefly summarizing the Language deprivation article in a paragraph or so.

Elanajp, since you are active on this article, would you like to take this on? In the case of a well-written child article, one could just copy the introductory paragraph of the lead and include it here as the content of the new section, but the WP:LEADPARAGRAPH at that article does not do a good job of summarizing the article content, so I wouldn't do that in this case. If you want to do this, just write a couple of sentences or a paragraph in your own words based on what you see at the Language deprivation article, and include at least one reference. This is actually a pretty easy task, but if you feel like it's too much for you right now, please {{reply}} or {{ping}} me below, and I'll whip something up quickly. Mathglot (talk) 20:31, 5 May 2020 (UTC)

@Mathglot: Hi Mathglot, I think that's a good idea, and sure, I can set that up. I will ask you if I have technical questions about how to do it. Another classmate who I'm working with Mora Josh has written up a summary paragraph for language deprivation, so that is ready. Elanajp (talk) 22:01, 5 May 2020 (UTC)

Pedagogy section

It looks like the the Pedagogy section focuses on strategies for sign language acquisition: the importance of eye gaze, attention getting strategies, child directed signing, and joint attention. Those topics are discussed in a paragraph in the Acquisition of sign language section. I propose integrating two sentences into the paragraph in Acquisition of sign languages: "To attract and direct a deaf child's attention, caregivers can break his line of gaze using hand and body movements, touch, and pointing to allow language input." "Finally, to reduce the need for divided attention, a caregiver can position themselves and objects within the child's visual field so that language and the object can be seen at the same time." I think the rest of the paragraph could be removed since it's repetitive and doesn't include citations. Alternatively, the above paragraph could be moved down into a section called something like "strategies for visual language acquisition." Elanajp (talk) 00:34, 6 May 2020 (UTC)

Skinner's theories

Chomsky pretty much destroyed Skinner's theories about language acquisition. This article shouldn't say anything about Skinner or his theories, it's not really relevant here, although it would be relevant in a general history of theories of child language acquisition; discredited ones, in this case, but still, part of the history. Mathglot (talk) 01:36, 25 April 2022 (UTC)

Primary sources

I recently removed an edit based on a primary source, and only after that I noticed that the whole article is kind of shot through with primary sources. Some of them are about assertions in the medical domain, such as claims about cochlear implants, and besides requiring WP:SECONDARY sources, they need to be WP:MEDRS-compliant as well. This may require some major cutting back in the article, or replacement of the majority of primary citations with secondary ones. Mathglot (talk) 00:07, 11 October 2022 (UTC)

I am also removing the following as it is based on a primary source. This will allow me to consolidate the "Academic development" section as a "Literacy development" section, the main thrust of the end of this article. If more information in secondary sources can later be gathered regarding skills in mathematics and language development, the information here may be reincorporated.

Removed: "According to Hrastinski & Wilbur (2016), American Sign Language proficiency is the single most contributing factor to the academic achievement of Deaf students who attend schools that teach with American Sign Language, particularly in the areas of reading literacy and math.[99] Deaf and hard of hearing children who have higher levels of American Sign Language proficiency and those who have higher proficiency in a second language (e.g., English) are those who were exposed to American Sign Language during the critical period of language.[99]BatArieh (talk) 14:02, 8 December 2022 (UTC)

Wiki Education assignment: Educational Neuroscience Proseminar

This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 29 August 2022 and 16 December 2022. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): BatArieh (article contribs).

— Assignment last updated by Joseph.palagano (talk) 16:28, 20 October 2022 (UTC)