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Initiatives & Projectsproject 6 -- Early Literacy: Mothers and ChildrenVLAS 6: Early Literacy: Mothers and Children (Lieberman, Mayberry):
Storybook sharing between parents and children is an important way to foster literacy. Early experiences with books expose children to concepts of print, narrative form, and knowledge of written lexical and syntactic structure, all of which contribute to later literacy. Although much is known about how hearing parents scaffold their children’s emergent literacy through specific strategies used in storybook reading, the same is not true for signing deaf children, who are in the unique situation of learning a printed language that is not the same as their native language. Deaf children must map one visual language onto another, and must also acquire the ability to attend to both objects and communication partners simultaneously. We are asking how ASL-using parents structure and support their children’s language development during storybook reading. Interactions between mother-child dyads during book reading are being compared to free-play interactions with objects to isolate the linguistic structures and communicative strategies deaf mothers and children use that are unique to storybook reading. Specifically, we are asking: How do deaf mothers mediate between ASL and English print when reading books with their children? Do deaf mothers accommodate their use of language to their child’s developing signing skills? How do deaf mothers manage their child’s visual attention? The answers are particularly important given research that shows a positive correlation between ASL skills and reading skills in deaf children and adults.Related Initiatives:
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