Abstract
Evidence for a Developmental Language Disorder (DLD) could surface with language processing/comprehension, language production, or a combination of both. Whereas, various studies have described cases of DLD in signing deaf children, there exist few detailed examples of deaf children who exhibit production issues in the absence of processing or comprehension challenges or motor deficits. We describe such a situation by detailing a case study of “Gregory”, a deaf native signer of American Sign Language (ASL). We adopt a detailed case-study methodology for obtaining information from Gregory’s family and school, which we combine with linguistic and non-linguistic data that we collected through one-on-one sessions with Gregory. The results provide evidence of persistent issues with language production (in particular, atypical articulation of some phonological aspects of signs), yet typical comprehension skills and unremarkable fine-motor motor skills. We also provide a snapshot of Gregory’s rich linguistic environment, which we speculate, may serve to attenuate his production deficit. The results of this study have implications for the provision of language services for signing deaf children in schools and also for language therapists. We propose that language therapists who are fluent in signed language be trained to work with signing children.
Highlights
A growing body of research on signing deaf and hard of hearing (DHH) children with developmental language disorder (DLD) has revealed that signed language disorders exist among the population of children who are exposed to a signed language in childhood
According to the parental interview, Gregory’s infancy and very early childhood was unremarkable; he was born full-term and there were no complications with the pregnancy or the birth, his early motor and physical development was normal, and he did not present with any behaviors in his first three years of life that would cause his family to take notice
This case study provides a snapshot of “Gregory”, a young adolescent who is a native signer of American Sign Language (ASL) and presents with an expressive language disorder
Summary
A growing body of research on signing deaf and hard of hearing (DHH) children with developmental language disorder (DLD) has revealed that signed language disorders exist among the population of children who are exposed to a signed language in childhood. Deficits have been noted for deaf children with a signed language impairment in syntax and morphology (Morgan et al 2007; Mason et al 2010; Marshall et al 2015), narrative abilities (Herman et al 2014), and the use of the signing space for topographic descriptions, such as the use of classifier signs to indicate spatial relationships between referenced entities (Morgan et al 2007; Marshall et al 2015; Quinto-Pozos et al 2013). There have been mixed results for vocabulary and semantics (Marshall et al 2013) Some of these writings adopted the conceptual framework of specific language impairment (SLI) to refer to the children’s deficits, there has been notable variation in the profiles of the DHH children across the studies. We adopt the term DLD throughout this manuscript, following recent writings that suggest that a change in labels is merited (Bishop et al 2017; Bishop 2017)
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