Kids Give Language Its Shape

Study of deaf Nicaraguan children found they refined sign language

THURSDAY, Sept. 16, 2004 (HealthDayNews) -- Children's brains are hard-wired to learn languages and, in some cases, to improve upon them.

That's the conclusion of a new study that followed several generations of deaf Nicaraguan children as they created their own sign language and then continuously tinkered it with each new group of signers.

"These children are actually creating language. This was a rare opportunity to discover a new language as it's emerging," said study author Ann Senghas, an assistant professor of psychology at Barnard College of Columbia University in New York City.

As each generation learned the sign language, they modified it. The more they changed the original "Nicaraguan Sign Language" (NSL), the more its rules and structure resembled those of other languages, the researchers found.

"From early on, from the first time the language was passed down to a new group of child learners, this language showed evidence of certain fundamental, universal hallmarks of language: discrete elements and hierarchal structure," explained study co-author Sotaro Kita, a senior lecturer in the department of experimental psychology at the University of Bristol in England.

"These hallmarks that are observed in all languages of the world arose once a communication system is learned, as a language, by children. Thus, core fundamentals of language can emerge out of children's learning abilities," Kita said.

The study appears in the Sept. 17 issue of Science.

Before 1977, most deaf people in Nicaragua were kept at home and didn't have contact with other deaf people. In 1977, a special education elementary school was opened, and about 50 deaf children attended. In 1981, a vocational school attended by about 200 deaf children opened. The children also began to socialize after school.

The schools taught the children in Spanish, with limited success. However, as they began to spend more and more time together, the modified sign language developed.

Today, about 800 deaf Nicaraguans, aged 4 to 45 years old, use the sign language. For this study, Senghas, Kita and colleague Asly Ozyurek from the Max Planck Institute in the Netherlands recruited 30 deaf people of various ages. They then split the group evenly into three subgroups. The first learned to sign before 1984, the second from 1984 to 1993 and the third group learned to sign after 1993. All of the children had been using NSL since they were at least 6 years old. The researchers also compared the sign language to gestures used by hearing individuals.

The study volunteers were shown a cartoon of a cat swallowing a bowling ball and then rolling down a hill in a wobbly manner. All of the hearing people and most of the first group of signers described the event by making a simultaneous gesture. But the children from the second and third groups generally described the event by breaking it down into its separate parts -- rolling, wobbling and downhill -- and then expressed those thoughts individually.

"This study truly illustrates the essential properties to language," said Michael Siegal, a professor of psychology at the University of Sheffield, in England. He wrote an accompanying editorial about the study.

"Once children are provided with a language community, they spontaneously create language -- either sign or spoken -- in terms of elements that meaningfully represent events in the world around them. They break down and segment a sequence that can then be embedded within another sequence to form meaningful propositions," he said.

Senghas said the ability to learn and improve upon language is something people lose as they get older. Each generation of signers passed down the language, but it was the younger children who changed it, making it more language-like.

"Humans lose the capacity to create the core fundamentals of language as they age," concurred Kita.

Another important finding of the study is how important social interaction is to the development of language, Senghas said.

"It is a central motivation or instinct for humans to create language spontaneously as part of their culture, and early access to a language underscores effective communication," Siegal added.

More information

To learn more about American Sign Language, visit the National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders.

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