Sign Language Skills Assessed Through a Sentence Reproduction Task

Area of Science:

• Linguistics
• Developmental Psychology
• Deaf Studies

Background:

• Understanding the linguistic development of signed languages is crucial for deaf education.
• Italian Sign Language (LIS) acquisition patterns require further investigation, especially in comparison to adult proficiency.
• Existing Sentence Reproduction Tasks (SRTs) for signed languages provide a basis for new assessment tools.

Purpose of the Study:

• To analyze Italian Sign Language (LIS) linguistic skills in deaf children of varying ages.
• To compare the LIS skills of deaf children with those of deaf signing adults.
• To investigate the impact of chronological age and age of LIS acquisition on linguistic performance.

Main Methods:

• Development and administration of a new Sentence Reproduction Task for Italian Sign Language (LIS-SRT).
• Data collection from 33 deaf signing participants across different age groups (children and adults).
• Analysis of participant scores and error types to identify age-related and acquisition-related differences.

Main Results:

• Younger deaf children omitted signs more frequently than older children and deaf adults.
• Non-manual components, produced concurrently with manual components, were the most challenging linguistic elements.
• Performance differences highlight specific areas of LIS acquisition difficulty.

Conclusions:

• Sign omission is a key indicator of LIS acquisition stage in children.
• Mastery of non-manual components is a critical and late-developing aspect of LIS proficiency.
• Findings contribute to understanding LIS development and inform pedagogical approaches for deaf learners.