Babies: Prewired to Learn Language

How is it that children as young as three years of age are speaking in full sentences and expressing all their needs with little or no difficulty? Language systems are extremely complex, and yet, infants and toddlers are able to grasp the phonemic combinations and the grammatical rules to be able to communicate with near fluency. Professor Noam Chomsky of MIT in the 1960’s made major discoveries in the area of child language development when he proposed that language ‘was an innate property of the human species’. Infants’ brains are actually prewired for the learning of language. That is not to say that their brains are prewired with language, rather their brains are prewired for the LEARNING of language. Babies are influenced by the language that they are exposed to; their ability to learn the languages that they are exposed to, is made possible by their predisposition to decipher the complexities of language.

If a baby were placed in a room with no interactions, that baby would not come out speaking a language. On the contrary, babies who are deprived of human interaction, show significant delay in their language acquisition and in fact such deprivation has a negative impact on their brain development. In other words, the first three years of a baby’s life are critical in establishing neural pathways necessary for language and brain development, as demonstrated in the 1997 National Institute of Child Health and Human Development Study of Early Child Care.

Numerous studies have shown that the effects of language stimulation and the growth of brain pathways are critical in the first three years of life. Placing a child in front of a television or a computer does not promote language development the way verbally interacting with the child enhances brain development. Likewise, an environment that exposes the child to sign language - spatial verbalizations and a language system with linguistic structure - as demonstrated in Susan Goodwyn, Ph.D. and Linda Acredolo, Ph.D.’s study found when examining children, ages 3, 4 and 8 that children who learned sign language out performed children who had not been exposed to sign language on every cognitive, linguistic and intellectual level

APPROXIMATION

You are signing with your baby for quite some time, and waiting for the day she will sign back. One day, here it is… your baby is attempting a sign. Your initial response, “was that really the sign for MILK?” “Was he really signing MORE?” I often say to parents, if you think it is an attempt to communicate, it is a sign! Now, respond with positive reinforcement.
Often times your baby’s sign doesn’t really look like the sign that you’re signing. Due to your child’s developing dexterity and fine motor skills, she cannot quite grasp the exact formation. While your baby tries to mimic your sign, the sign may look different. You may ask yourself,” does my baby really signing or just playing with his fingers?”
For example, the sign for MORE is to bring all five fingertips from one hand to the five fingertips of the other hand and tap them together. Many children will approximate the sign into one fingertip onto the palm of the other hand.
See pictures: all children sign MORE.
Approximation is signing! It is almost like saying dada for daddy at first. Please, do not manipulate her hands to form the right sign. Keep demonstrating the correct formation, encouraging your child to sign, and the right hand shape will come with time. This is one of the reasons that it is important to sign ASL so everyone will sign the same way without modifying the sign by their needs.
By accepting your child’s approximations, and encouraging her to keep signing, you will reduce her level of frustration. Consistency is the key. If you use the ASL version repeatedly, your child will eventually follow your lead and sign that version.

Let the Sign Shine!
etel

Etel Leit, M.S.
Founder & Owner http://www.signshine.com/
Publisher http://www.babysignshine.com/

 ASL  benefits bi-lingual families!

“I'd totally recommend signing with bilingual children. Signing not only gave us our first means of effective communication, but was also definitely a nice way to confirm that [our son is] comprehending both English and Japanese -- the two languages he is most exposed to. In fact, [he] has recently started responding with sign when spoken to in Cantonese also...thus confirming he comprehends all three languages just fine.”

“My 2 yr old speaks to me in Portuguese and to his dad in English, sometimes using signs too as we are both hard of hearing. He always uses ASL with my Deaf friends.”

“What's been especially helpful is that, since Aries is being raised bilingual, for me to show the sign whenever I say the Russian word for an object, and when I say the English one. I think it really helped cement the idea that they stood for the same thing.”

“If you speak English and your partner speaks Spanish, when introducing a word such as "milk" you would say the word "milk" in English and introduce the sign for that word. Your partner would introduce the word "milk" in Spanish ("leche") while also using the same sign for "milk"."

Yes, it's extremely useful to use the same signs with the two different languages that your child is exposed to--it bridges the gap, decreasing confusion and frustration while increasing learning opportunities and language development.

On our Baby Fingers sign & song DVD, we teach our color song in English, Spanish, and ASL.  Bi-lingual families in our program have benefitted, and have also translated it into other home languages!