Moments of Permanence - Notes from a lecture

From: ex_luludi775 Date: July 27th, 2009 07:36 am (UTC) (Link)

"children who grow up with sign language, rather than spoken, go through a babbling stage with sign, mimicking random gestures made by caregivers, before they actually get on to coherence."

That is a trip...

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From: rainbow Date: July 27th, 2009 08:19 am (UTC) (Link)

They do! They wave their hands and make faces, mimicking what they see. it's wonderful and adorable and cool and I wish more parents were taught about it.

I don't think it's so much random, though -- they tend to try to make the signs they see the most earliest.

It's not just children that don't grow up with spoken language, so long as they learning signing, too -- one of my (hearing) friends taught her daughter simple ASL signs from birth because babies have the coordination to sign long before they can communicate with spoken speech. M could indicate with signs what she wanted/needed very young, and picked up spoken language very quickly once she hit that developmental spot, since she already language. She's very verbal and much easier to understand than many 4 year olds. She made up her own signs for unfamiliar things, too, which is evidently very common in signing children.

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From: sami Date: July 27th, 2009 02:26 pm (UTC) (Link)

It's random as opposed to meaningful; it's a selection from sounds/signs they commonly hear/see, but it's not particularly important which. It's the brain forming pathways linking the sounds and gestures to communication.

The way language functions in the brain is unbelievably fascinating.

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From: rainbow Date: July 27th, 2009 02:56 pm (UTC) (Link)

it's a selection from sounds/signs they commonly hear/see, but it's not particularly important which. It's the brain forming pathways linking the sounds and gestures to communication.

I think we're coming at this 2 different ways due to differnt fields of study; your linguistics vs my human development, so maybe our words mean different things.

To me that they're clearly mimicking what they see the most often more and that that mimicking IS their brains forming pathways to learn communication makes it not random. Not easily understood by caretakers/adults, yes. But not random, since it's neither without reason or aim nor is there an equal chance of their using any particular gesture (those are the 2 meanigns of random I know; I'm sure there are others). The last stuff I read -- admittedly many years ago -- showed they mimicked most often the gestures they saw most often and can show they understand the signs when they see them, before they can make them.

SO fascinating, yes. Chris always enjoyed studying it, but I loved most reading about M using (and inventing) signs from the time she was teensy, long before one can understand speech-only taught babies. C is ready to pop soon iwth #2, and I keep wondering what M will teach her.

It especially fascinates me that spoken language and signed language aren't processed the same in the brain at all. I don't know if that contributes to babies learnign sign so much earlier or not,though.

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