ASL Facilitates Analogical Reasoning Ability of Deaf Children


Analogical reasoning has been postulated to be the root of all learning. Past research has shown that Deaf children lag behind their hearing counterparts in analogical reasoning. However, these studies have usually been conducted in the researcher's written or spoken language. Henner et al. sought to test the analogical reasoning ability of Deaf children when tested in ASL.

Their participants were 267 children aged 8-18 who lived in residential schools for the Deaf. They were asked to complete "A is to B as C is to what?" type questions (e.g., microwave : kitchen :: car : what?). The directions and all testing was conducted using signing.

The results showed that analogical reasoning ability was dependent on the participant's age and ASL status (native signers, defined for this study as having at least one Deaf parent, did significantly better than children whose parents were both hearing). However, ASL vocabulary and syntactic ability were more important predictors than either of these.

The authors conclude that ASL is a viable language for fostering analogical reasoning ability in Deaf children, and that hearing parents can assist in the development of this ability even if their signing isn't perfect.




Paywalled
Henner, J., Novogrodsky, R., Caldwell-Harris, C. & Hoffmeister, R. (2018). The Development of American Sign Language-Based Analogical Reasoning in Signing Deaf Children. J Speech Lang Hear Res. doi: 10.1044/2018_JSLHR-L-18-0062.


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