Non-native signers entering a signing school before age 6 had better ASL abilities than those entering later, but did not equal native signers¶

Claim · All claims
Evidence · 1 study · associational r2 · q3
Currency · newest study 2016 · not yet checked against its sources · not reviewed by a person

Subclaims¶

q3 i? Non-native signers who entered before age 6 had better ASL abilities than those who entered after age 6; children entering between 6 and 12 did better than those entering after 12 but never caught up to native signers. → Henner J 2016

Evidence¶

Henner J 2016¶

Henner J, Caldwell-Harris CL, Novogrodsky R and Hoffmeister R (2016) American Sign Language Syntax and Analogical Reasoning Skills Are Influenced by Early Acquisition and Age of Entry to Signing Schools for the Deaf. Front. Psychol. 7:1982. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2016.01982

q3 · i? · associational · r2

In the discussion of the grouped age-of-entry results, non-native signers entering before age 6 had better ASL abilities than later entrants, and 6–12 entrants outperformed post-12 entrants without reaching native-signer levels.

"Non-native signers who entered the school of the Deaf before age 6 had better ASL abilities than did those who entered after age 6. Deaf children who entered between ages 6 and 12 had better ASL skills than those who entered after age 12 but never equaled or caught up to the native signers."

Discussion¶

Related Claims¶

• The advantage of signing from birth holds for Deaf learners of all ages tested and all age-of-entry groupings — related
• Later age of entry to a signing school for the Deaf is associated with lower ASL syntactic judgment and analogical reasoning scores, with a marked decline for entry after age 12 — related
• Native signers (children of at least one Deaf parent) outperform non-native signers on ASL syntactic judgment and analogical reasoning tasks — related
• All three groups differed significantly on expressive vocabulary, with non-native signers scoring lowest — related