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Young children's acquisition of the handshape aspect of American Sign Language signs: Parental report findings

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 November 2008

Theodore Siedlecki Jr  and
John D. Bonvillian
Theodore Siedlecki Jr
Affiliation:
University of Virginia
John D. Bonvillian*
Affiliation:
University of Virginia
*
John D. Bonvillian, Department of Psychology, Gilmer Hall, University of Virginia, Charlottesville, VA 22903–2477. email: jdb5b@virginia.edu
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Abstract

The acquisition of the handshape aspect of American Sign Language signs was examined longitudinally in nine young children of deaf parents. In monthly home visit sessions, the parents demonstrated on videotape how their children formed the different signs in their lexicons. According to these parental reports, handshapes were produced accurately in 49.8% of the children's different signs. Accuracy of handshape production typically improved with the children's increasing age and vocabulary size. Four basic handshapes (/5, G, B, A/) predominated in the children's early sign productions. Measures of the children's handshape production accuracy, ordinal position of initial production, and frequency of production were used to describe the order in which handshapes were most often acquired. It was also observed that the part of the hand involved in contacting a sign's location often affected the accuracy of the handshapes being produced.

Type
Articles
Information
Applied Psycholinguistics , Volume 18 , Issue 1 , January 1997 , pp. 17 - 39
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1997

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