Development of Gaze Control for Integration of Language and Visual Information in Deaf Children

项目摘要/摘要 儿童通过将他们感知到的语言输入与世界上的物体和事件联系起来学习单词 在他们周围。当听力儿童在看着物体的同时感知听觉语言输入时， 学习手语的聋儿既能感知语言输入，又能视觉感知物体。因此，聋儿 必须学会战略性地、迅速地将他们的视觉注意力分配给将语言映射到其所指对象上。这 由于失聪儿童经常无法完全接触语言，学习过程变得复杂起来： 尽管在技术和干预方面取得了进展，但聋人通常不能完全接触到口语 大多数失聪儿童的父母都缺乏手语方面的专业知识，他们生来就有听力。一起， 这些因素使年幼的失聪儿童面临着全面第一语言发育严重延迟的风险， 这对后来的语言、识字和学业成绩产生了连锁影响。因此，至关重要的是 确定与年幼失聪儿童的输入和互动如何以最佳方式支持早期语言发展。 这项拟议的项目调查了学习美国手语(ASL)的聋哑儿童的单词学习。 失聪人口中有相当大的一部分，而且在不断增加。单词学习是语言的重要组成部分 使儿童能够将对象和事件标签与周围世界进行映射的获取。具体目标 这一建议的目的是1)定义父母的输入和孩子的注意力的时间对齐，以支持 聋儿的词汇学习；2)识别儿童动态转移视觉注意在词汇中的作用 学习；以及3)展示语言和参照线索如何支持单词学习。此项目使用 亲子互动与行为和眼球跟踪的自然主义观察相结合 通过操纵输入的时间和输入提示的组合来确定哪种输入 语境对ASL词汇学习的支持作用最强。该项目具有广泛的理论意义。当前 共同注意的描述几乎完全基于口语互动，但语言输入和 当语言和注意力同时被感知到时，注意的组织和时间必须不同 情态。拟议的项目将导致对共同关注的扩展、统一的理论解释， 包括跨通道的单词学习。这个项目对父母也有直接的翻译影响， 早期干预专业人员和聋儿教师。首先，拟议的工作旨在确定 支持单词学习的儿童视觉注意力的发展基准，以及这些基准 可以在评估中提供诊断工具。其次，了解支持的最佳输入时机和提示 单词学习可以为有聋哑儿童的家庭提供干预方法。当前项目的重点是 然而，这些发现将广泛适用，因为视觉线索提供了关键的 为聋哑儿童通过各种方式学习语言提供的信息。

Project Summary / Abstract Children learn words by connecting the language input they perceive to the objects and events in the world around them. While hearing children perceive auditory linguistic input while simultaneously looking at objects, deaf children learning sign language perceive both linguistic input and objects visually. Therefore, deaf children must learn to strategically and swiftly allocate their visual attention to map language onto its referents. This learning process is complicated by the fact that deaf children frequently have incomplete access to language: despite gains in technology and interventions, spoken language is generally not fully accessible to deaf children, and most deaf children are born to hearing parents who lack expertise in sign language. Together, these factors place young deaf children at risk for significant delay in development of a full first language, which has cascading consequences on later language, literacy, and academic outcomes. Thus it is critical to identify how input and interactions with young deaf children can optimally support early language development. The proposed project investigates word learning in deaf children learning American Sign Language (ASL), a significant and growing subset of the deaf population. Word learning is a critical component of language acquisition that enables children to map object and event labels with the surrounding world. The specific aims of this proposal are to 1) define the temporal alignment of parent input and children’s attention that supports word learning in deaf children; 2) identify the role of children’s dynamically shifting visual attention in word learning; and 3) demonstrate how linguistic and referential cues support word learning. This project uses a combination of naturalistic observations of parent-child interaction and behavioral and eye-tracking experiments in which the timing of input and the combination of input cues are manipulated to determine which contexts are most supportive of word learning in ASL. This project has broad theoretical implications. Current accounts of joint attention are based almost entirely on spoken language interactions, but language input and attention must be organized and timed differently when both language and attention are perceived in a single modality. The proposed project will lead to an expanded, unified theoretical account of joint attention that encompass word learning across modalities. This project also has direct translational implications for parents, early intervention professionals, and teachers of deaf children. First, the proposed work seeks to identify developmental benchmarks in children’s visual attention that support word learning, and these benchmarks can serve diagnostic tools in evaluation. Seond, understanding the optimal input timing and cues that support word learning can inform approaches to intervention for families with deaf children. The current project focuses on deaf children acquiring ASL, yet the findings will be broadly applicable, in that visual cues provide critical information for deaf children learning language across modalities.