matical Analysis of Elicited Language-Preschool Sen-
tence Level (GAEL-P) (is a test that specifically
analyzes the English skills of deaf and hard-of-
hearing preschoolers. In the single-word vocabulary
part of this test, children are asked to identify objects
either by signs or by speech. Children are also asked
to select objects that the tester names with signed and
spoken words. The number of words the preschoolers
produce and understand is a measure of their expres-
sive and receptive vocabularies.
Testing requires decisions about why, how, and
what tests to use. Marie Thompson and her col-
leagues suggested that reasons for assessment of deaf
school-age children are: ‘‘To provide numerical
scores to school districts; to identify a developmental
language level and specific language targets for re-
mediation; to measure efficacy of intervention based
upon change in language behavior’’ (Thompson,
Biro, Vethivelu, Pious, and Hatfield 1987, p. 30).
These authors provide an extensive array of tests
from which to choose when creating a custom-tailored
battery of tests for a particular hearing-impaired
school-age child.
Education of Deaf Children: Research
Findings
The majority of deaf youngsters do not receive in-
fant intervention and early exposure to ASL. When
they do, the language patterns of children learning
ASL from early infancy closely parallel the develop-
mental progression of hearing children acquiring
oral language. Infants learning ASL as a first lan-
guage generally develop their first signed words at
about the same age and sometimes even earlier than
children learning an oral language. The two-word
stage in ASL learning has some semantic features sim-
ilar to the production of telegraphic speech among
toddlers learning oral language. Overregularization
of grammatical features (‘‘I falled down’’) and overex-
tension of word meanings (for example, calling all
men ‘‘daddy’’) occur among toddlers whether they
are using manual signs or oral speech.
Research suggests that knowing ASL early as a
first language aids deaf children in developing better
skills with the English language. Orally educated deaf
children of hearing parents have been found to out-
perform manually educated children of hearing par-
ents. This may mean that parental mastery of the
language used in the earliest transactions with a child
is most important for a young child’s developing lan-
guage skills.
Some drawbacks to education for deaf infants
occur when hearing parents have not learned to use
ASL or they use it infrequently and provide only sim-
Depending on the severity of hearing loss, a child may benefit from
using a hearing aid. (L. Steinmark, Custom Medical Stock
Photo)ple signs. In addition, the variety of existing signing
systems can be a serious source of frustration and in-
consistency for children. Support for and educational
opportunities for parents and caring family members
to learn sign language should be an important goal
of intervention programs for deaf infants.
Families and educators have differed historically
in promoting different educational approaches to
help deaf children develop language. Oralist pro-
grams emphasize that deaf children are best served
by learning to read lips, by auditory training to use re-
sidual hearing as much as possible, and by articula-
tion training to improve spoken enunciation.
Manual systems are urged by those who believe
that some deaf children will have a poor educational
prognosis with only oral methods. Use of manually
coded English (such as finger spelling and ASL) in
combination with speech is called total communication.
Quigley and King provided an overview in 1982 of
the half-dozen most commonly used sign systems.HEARING LOSS AND DEAFNESS 179