Baby Signs & the importance of ASL

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Mrs Bucket

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Many parents have heard of baby sign language, but may not know why signing with babies is such a positive thing. Also, they may not know how to begin signing with their child. In this article we will look at the benefits of signing with babies and how to teach your own baby how to sign.

The main reason why signing with babies is so beneficial is because it reduces frustration. Babies are able to make simple signs long before they have the ability to produce speech. We often see babies waving bye-bye or putting their arms in the air when then want to be picked up; these are simple gestures, or signs, that babies are able to make at an early age. So it stands to reason that they could use actions to say so much more. Signing with your baby gives them the tools they need to communicate their needs to you before they can talk.
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source

Laura Berg of Canada has been teaching her daughter Fireese ASL since birth. She has introduced Baby Signs and Fireese has put together 2-word sentences at 10 months & fingerspell the manual alphabets at 15 months.

[yt]7gSZfW4gVhI[/yt]
 
AWESOME...reduces frustration and encourages thoughts? Love it!


However, for deaf kids, that is taken away by the audists. This is deaf people's language and hearing people are using it to their advantage ..great! But when it comes to deaf children, that is denied to them.
 
I'm a firm believer in baby signs. I've been signing with my great neices and nephews since they were infants.
 
Oh yes, I strong beleive it's very important to expose the children who their parents are... I had been sign to my both boys since they were babies...

My oldest son can't do with finger alphabet but just fully sign like ASL but my youngest son can do with finger alphabet and sign like ASL... I don't teach them do with finger alphabet but put the picture of finger alphabet on the wall of their bedrooms... They look and moviate themselves...
 
I recall when my hearing cousins would play with my sisters and I, after a while of observing us, they would start mimicking us.

They'd start trying to sign to their parents' faces. My aunts and uncles would look right at us and ask "What did they say?"

We'd just shrug "We don't know! They made up something!!" :lol:
 
Mrs Bucket said:
I recall when my hearing cousins would play with my sisters and I, after a while of observing us, they would start mimicking us.

They'd start trying to sign to their parents' faces. My aunts and uncles would look right at us and ask "What did they say?"

We'd just shrug "We don't know! They made up something!!" :lol:
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awww thats SO cute!!

yeah i did watch my hearing two kids signing to each other in their own make up signing for their own game. :giggle: my kids signing are not clear but i understand them enough.
 
Mrs Bucket said:
source

Laura Berg of Canada has been teaching her daughter Fireese ASL since birth. She has introduced Baby Signs and Fireese has put together 2-word sentences at 10 months & fingerspell the manual alphabets at 15 months.

[yt]7gSZfW4gVhI[/yt]
Click to expand...

I would say this is a *star* ASL user. Just like oralist show their best kids, this is a child who is a star.
 
faire_jour said:
I would say this is a *star* ASL user. Just like oralist show their best kids, this is a child who is a star.
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My hearing kids could sign these basic words by the time they were one year old...

My friend's hearing daughter could sign over 20 words by the time she was 9 months old..now that's a star ASL user.
 
mrs bucket said:
i recall when my hearing cousins would play with my sisters and i, after a while of observing us, they would start mimicking us.

They'd start trying to sign to their parents' faces. My aunts and uncles would look right at us and ask "what did they say?"

we'd just shrug "we don't know! They made up something!!" :lol:
Click to expand...


lol!
 
I think it is absolutely great for babies (whether they're hearing or deaf) to be able to use ASL at a very early age. It is not only because it reduces the frustrations and the stress/anger - but it also does boost their language comprehension.

Both of my boys were able to sign some few signs by the time they were 6-7 months old. They have been exposed to ASL on a daily basis.

As for the video - That is the norm for a child who is exposed to ASL on a daily basis. If that child was not exposed to ASL on a daily basis - It would have been showing a different light.
 
faire_jour said:
I would say this is a *star* ASL user. Just like oralist show their best kids, this is a child who is a star.
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Don't think so. My granddaughter was signing this much at same age, and at two pretty much can converse.
 
faire_jour said:
Show me. Show me that the average age of knowing the entire manual alphabet is before 18 months.
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Are you sure you don't live in Missouri?:giggle:

BTW, the norm, and average, are not the same thing.

You are the one who questions it...can you show me where it isn't?
 
jillio said:
Are you sure you don't live in Missouri?:giggle:

BTW, the norm, and average, are not the same thing.

You are the one who questions it...can you show me where it isn't?
Click to expand...

You claimed it was. I just wanted to see if there were any facts to back it up, obviously not. When questioned you simply shift the responsibilty, as always.
 
Original Baby Signs Study


Drs. Acredolo and Goodwyn have conducted over two decades of scientific research on the use of sign language with hearing babies, including a longitudinal study funded by the National Institutes of Health. Below are the highlights from that study.

More than 140 families joined the study beginning when their babies were 11 months old. Each family was randomly assigned to a signing or a non-signing group. The groups were equivalent at the beginning of the study in terms of the following characteristics: sex and birth order of the children, their tendency to vocalize or verbalize words, and the parents education and income levels.

The children were assessed using standardized language measures at 11, 15, 19, 24, 30, and 36 months old. In addition, as many children as could be relocated at age 8 were assessed using the WISC-III IQ test, the most commonly used measure of childrens intelligence.

Results of the study revealed that 24-month-old signing babies were on average talking more like 27- or 28-month-olds, representing more than a three-month advantage over the non-signers. The babies who signed were also putting together significantly longer sentences. In addition, 36-month-old signers on average were talking like 47-month-olds, putting them almost a full year ahead of their average age mates. At 8 years, those who had signed as babies scored an average of 12 points higher in IQ on the WISC-III than their non-signing peers.


In addition to helping babies learn to talk and jumpstarting their intellectual development, a number of very important social-emotional benefits were also revealed. Acredolo and Goodwyn found that signing with hearing babies:

ﾷ reduces frustration, biting and other aggressive behaviors.

ﾷ helps parents and teachers be more observant and responsive.

ﾷ builds trust between babies and their parents and caregivers.

ﾷ allows babies to share their worlds revealing just how smart babies really are.

ﾷ promotes positive emotional development.

ﾷ boosts babies' self-confidence and builds self-esteem.


https://www.babysigns.com/index.cfm?id=64
 
Bibliography of Baby Signs Research


For those interested in reading more about the background research concerning the Baby Signsﾮ Program (known in scholarly journals as "symbolic gesturing"), the following articles are recommended. These articles are readily available in libraries.


Susan Goodwyn, Linda Acredolo, and Catherine Brown (2000). Impact of symbolic gesturing on early language development. Journal of Nonverbal Behavior, 24 (2), pp. 81-103. Available online.


Acredolo, L. P., & Goodwyn, S.W. (July 2000). The long-term impact of symbolic gesturing during infancy on IQ at age 8. Paper presented at the meetings of the International Society for Infant Studies, Brighton, UK. Available online.


Brie Moore, Linda Acredolo, & Susan Goodwyn (April 2001). Symbolic gesturing and joint attention: Partners in facilitating verbal development. Paper presented at the Biennial Meetings of the Society for Research in Child Development. Available online.


Linda Acredolo and Susan Goodwyn (1985). Symbolic gesturing in language development: A case study. Human Development, 28, 40-49.
This article presents the story of our first "Baby Signer," Lindas daughter Kate who began to spontaneously create symbolic gestures when she was about 12 months old. These were "sensible" gestures (like sniffing for "flower" and arms-up for "big"). We then made it easy for her by modeling other simple gestures for things in which she was interested and followed her progress in terms of both gestural and verbal development.


Linda Acredolo and Susan Goodwyn (1988). Symbolic gesturing in normal infants. Child Development, 59, 450-466.
Our goal in the two separate studies described in this article was to learn more about the spontaneous development of symbolic gestures by infants. Was Lindas daughter alone in doing so (see Acredolo & Goodwyn, 1985) or were other babies as creative as Kate? The answer was extremely clear. Although Linda was a bit disappointed to learn that Kate was not totally unique, she quickly became excited to see that most babies create at least one or two such symbolic gestures and that some children, like Kate, create many. The article also describes (a) relations with verbal development, (b) the sources of the gestures in the babies everyday lives, (c) and gender and birth order differences.


Linda Acredolo and Susan Goodwyn (1990). The significance of symbolic gesturing for understanding language development. In R. Vasta (Ed.), Annals of Child Development (Vol. 7, pp. 1-42). London: Jessica Kingsley Publishers.
This invited chapter provided an opportunity for us to review the role that symbolic gestures, including formal sign language systems such as ASL, seem to play in the development of verbal language in hearing children. We describe many classic case studies (e.g., Holmes & Holmes, 1980 and Prinz & Prinz, 1979) in addition to our own work and identify common denominators among them. The final discussion addresses the question of whether certain early milestones of language development (e.g., first true symbol, first two symbol combinations) are more easily achieved in the gestural than in the verbal modality.


Susan Goodwyn and Linda Acredolo, (1993). Symbolic gesture versus word: Is there a modality advantage for onset of symbol use? Child Development, 64, 688-701.
The results reported in this article represent some of the earliest findings from our NIH-sponsored longitudinal study of the impact of purposefully encouraging babies to use symbolic gestures. The goal was to shed light on a hotly debated topic: the degree to which gestural symbols represent an easier entr￩e into symbolic communication.


Linda Acredolo, L. P., & Goodwyn, S.W. (1997). Furthering our understanding of what humans understand, Human Development, 40, 25-31.
Because we had done so much work in the area of children and symbolic gesturing, we were asked by the editor of this prestigious journal to write an article commenting on the other work presented in the issue  wonderful research done at Emory University on the use of gestures by chimpanzees. We were particularly thrilled when a picture of one of our own "Baby Signers" was used for the cover of the issue.


Susan Goodwyn and Linda Acredolo (1998). Encouraging symbolic gestures: Effects on the relationship between gesture and speech. In J. Iverson & S. Goldin-Meadows (Eds.) The nature and functions of gesture in childrens communication (pp. 61-73). San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.
This invited chapter provided an opportunity for us to summarize our program of research on symbolic gesturing, from the earliest work with Kate to the results of our NIH-sponsored longitudinal study of the impact of gesturing on verbal development.


Linda Acredolo, Susan Goodwyn, Karen Horobin, and Yvonne Emmons (1999). The signs and sounds of early language development. In L. Balter & C. Tamis-LeMonda (Eds.), Child Psychology: A Handbook of Contemporary Issues (pp. 116 - 139). New York: Psychology Press.
The editors of this volume asked us to do more than simply summarize our research findings. We were delighted to accept the challenge. Our goal in the chapter was to show how the results of our studies of symbolic gesturing shed light on important and still unresolved questions in language development: Why does comprehension of language generally precede production? Why is vocabulary growth so slow in the months following the first word? What accounts for the frequently observed phenomenon called the "vocabulary spurt?" What developments underlie the beginning of the "two word" stage? In the final section of the chapter we challenge researchers to begin using symbolic gesturing as a tool to explore other important developmental issues, issues that have traditionally had to await the onset of verbal language (e.g., longterm memory for events, concept development, abstract thinking, emotional knowledge). As an added bonus the chapter includes nearly a dozen vignettes drawn from our data and chosen to illustrate the Baby Signsﾮ creativity we've seen babies use over and over. Available Online.


Goodwyn, S.W.,Acredolo, L.P., & Brown, C. (2000). Impact of symbolic gesturing on early language development. Journal of Nonverbal Behavior. 24,81-103.
This is the article in which we present the most important findings from our NIH-sponsored longitudinal study of the impact on verbal development of purposefully encouraging infants to use symbolic gestures. Standardized tests of both receptive and expressive language development had been administered at 11, 15, 19, 24, 30, and 36 months to both an experimental group of babies ("Baby Signers") and two control groups. Results demonstrated a clear advantage for the Baby Signsﾮ babies, thereby laying to rest the most frequently voiced concern of parents  that using the Baby Signsﾮ Program might hamper learning to talk. In fact, the good news is that Baby Signsﾮ communication actually facilitates verbal language development.


Acredolo, L. P., & Goodwyn, S.W. (July 2000). The long-term impact of symbolic gesturing during infancy on IQ at age 8. Paper presented at the meetings of the International Society for Infant Studies, Brighton, UK.
The WISC-III was administered to subjects from our NIH-sponsored longitudinal study during the summer following completion of second grade. Much to our surprise and delight, the results indicated a significant 12 point advantage for the children who had been encouraged to use the Baby Signsﾮ Program during their second year of life (Mean IQ = 114) over the children who had been in the Non-Intervention Control Group (Mean IQ= 102). The advantage held for both the Verbal and Performance Sub-scales of the WISC-III.


Brie Moore, Linda Acredolo, & Susan Goodwyn (April 2001). Symbolic gesturing and joint attention: Partners in facilitating verbal development. Paper presented at the Biennial Meetings of the Society for Research in Child Development.
Using video data collected in our federally funded, longitudinal study, we looked to see whether the Baby Signsﾮ experience stimulates development of the ability to actively direct an adult's attention to something in which the baby is interested. Called, "joint attention," this ability is known to be an important contributor to learning to talk. Much to our delight, the Baby Signsﾮ babies were indeed found to engage in more joint attention episodes with their mothers than did non- Baby Signsﾮ babies during laboratory play sessions at 19 and 24 months. Moreover, the effect held independently of linguistic skill, indicating that the Baby Signsﾮ experience itself was a unique contributor to the joint attention scores. These data are important because they help explain why Baby Signsﾮ babies tend to learn to talk earlier than non-Baby Signsﾮ babies. The study may also help explain why the Baby Signsﾮ experience has been found to have a positive effect on IQ at age 8.

This should be enough to get you started with your reading. Plenty of research to access.
 
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