Development of Mental Verbs in Children of Deaf Adults (CODA)

Lee, Eun Ju; Kim, Young-Tae

ORIGINAL ARTICLE

Commun Sci Disord. 2011;16(4): 503-520.

Eun Ju Lee^` , and Young-Tae Kim^`

이은주(Eun Ju Lee)| 김영태(Young-Tae Kim)

ABSTRACT

Background & Objectives
Mental verbs, which can be learned only from communication, have a greater effect on hearing children who have deaf parents. Therefore, to determine the difference between children of deaf parents and children of normal parents, comparing their communications skills especially in mental verbs will provide ideas regarding how deaf parents affect language development in their hearing children. Moreover, through different expressions of the mental verbs, different daily activity patterns and standardized social patterns can be observed. The present study shows the characteristic of mental verbs comparing two groups (children of normal parents versus children of deaf parents) from preschool through elementary school.
Method
The accuracy, ratio of frequency (mental verb/clause) and linguistic structure complexity levels of mental verbs through the “mental verbs picture expressing words” and “story retelling: frog where are you?” tasks were measured. The authors received basic information on how much time was spent by parents with their children and compared the results between the hearing children with deaf parents and children with normal parents, (age 4 to 9 years). Each group consisted of 28 subjects.
Results
The children of normal parents significantly outperformed the children of deaf parents regarding the accuracy of the psych mental verbs picture expressing words and the ratio of frequency of perceptive and psych mental verbs through story retelling. The difference in the linguistic structure complexity levels of using mental verbs between children with deaf parents and children with normal parents was significant. The linguistic structure complexity levels of using mental verbs were significantly greater in the children of normal parents than in children of deaf adults (CODA).
Discussion & Conclusion
The results from the present study indicate that, from 4 to 9 years of age, children’s ability to make statements using mental verbs changes qualitatively with the linguistic home environment, especially syntax.