The Onset and Mastery of Spatial Language in Children Acquiring British Sign Language

Autor/inn/en	Morgan, Gary; Herman, Rosalind; Barriere, Isabelle; Woll, Bencie
Titel	The Onset and Mastery of Spatial Language in Children Acquiring British Sign Language
Quelle	In: Cognitive Development, 23 (2008) 1, S.1-19 (19 Seiten) PDF als Volltext Verfügbarkeit
Sprache	englisch
Dokumenttyp	gedruckt; online; Zeitschriftenaufsatz
ISSN	0885-2014
DOI	10.1016/j.cogdev.2007.09.003
Schlagwörter	Sentences; Semantics; Sign Language; Language Acquisition; Foreign Countries; Spatial Ability; Children; Longitudinal Studies; Motion; Task Analysis; Nonverbal Communication; United Kingdom + Suchen Sie Ihr Suchwort? Sentence analysis; Satzanalyse; Semantik; Gebärdensprache; Sprachaneignung; Spracherwerb; Ausland; Räumliches Vorstellungsvermögen; Child; Kind; Kinder; Longitudinal study; Longitudinal method; Longitudinal methods; Längsschnittuntersuchung; Bewegungsablauf; Aufgabenanalyse; Non-verbal communication; Nonverbale Kommunikation; Großbritannien
Abstract	In the course of language development children must solve arbitrary form-to-meaning mappings, in which semantic components are encoded onto linguistic labels. Because sign languages describe motion and location of entities through iconic movements and placement of the hands in space, child signers may find spatial semantics-to-language mapping easier to learn than child speakers. This hypothesis was tested in two studies: a longitudinal analysis of a native signing child's use of British Sign Language to describe motion and location events between the ages 1-10 and 3-0, and performance of 18 native signing children between the ages of 3-0 and 4-11 on a motion and location sentence comprehension task. The results from both studies argue against a developmental advantage for sign language learners for the acquisition of motion and location forms. Early forms point towards gesture and embodied actions followed by protracted mastery of the use of signs in representational space. The understanding of relative spatial relations continues to be difficult, despite the iconicity of these forms in the language, beyond 5 years of age. (Author).
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Erfasst von	ERIC (Education Resources Information Center), Washington, DC
Update	2017/4/10