The Effects of a Hearing Mother's Reading Picture Books to Her Deaf Child Based on the Support from a Signer of Japanese Sign Language

ニホンシュワ　ワシャ　ノ　シエン　ヲ　カツヨウ　シタ　チョウボ　ニ　ヨル　ロウジ　ヘ　ノ　エホン　ヨミ　カツドウ　ト　ソノ　コウカ

タナカ, ミズホ

Tanaka, Mizuho

佐野, 愛子

サノ, アイコ

Sano, Aiko

Mother Tongue, Heritage Language, and Bilingual Education Research Association

ボゴ　ケイショウゴ　バイリンガル　キョウイク　ケンキュウカイ

日本手話

母子コミュニケーション

絵本読み

Research Papers

Reports have indicated that reading abilities and syntactic knowledge of Deaf adults often remain at the level of 10-year-old hearing children. However, a Deaf child who receives abundant natural sign language from birth is known to develop sign language as a first language on par with the development of spoken languages in hearing children. Since the majority of Deaf children are born to hearing parents with no prior exposure to sign languages, it is vital to assist both the hearing parents and the Deaf child in learning sign language at the earliest possible stage of development. This study observed a case in which a hearing mother, with assistance from a Deaf instructor, used Japanese Sign Language (JSL) to read picture books to her Deaf child over a period of 9 months. Seven out of 130 video-recorded sessions were extracted, and analyses of these sessions revealed an increase in the number of words used by the mother and child in both JSL and spoken Japanese, as well as an increase in eye contact. The findings and implications of this study are discussed taking the advice of the Deaf instructor and interviews with the hearing mother into consideration.

佐野, 愛子