Tactile aid usage with prelinguistic, profoundly deaf children

Abstract

Since 1977, we have followed a total of 12 prelinguistic, profoundly deaf children who used different amounts of tactile stimulation at various stages of language acquisition. Subjects ranged in age from 6 weeks to 5 years old at the onset of tactile aid usage. Longitudinal data measuring speech perception, speech production, and general linguistic behavior suggest that our nine successful tactile aid users followed a sequence of language acquisition similar to that outlined for normal hearing children [A. Peters, The Units of Language Acquisition (Cambridge U. P., Cambridge, England, 1983)] and that Peters' work provides a theoretical basis for incorporating tactile aids into language training programs for young deaf children. Language learning difficulties and socioenvironmental factors, not device design and construction, account for why three subjects did not become frequent tactile aid users. The cumulative effect of our data for all subjects suggests that there is a need for a gradation of devices p...