教婴儿学学手势语
http://www.100md.com
2000年10月19日
Like most babies, Meadow Cairns has her fretful moments. Is she hungry or thirsty? Does she need a nappy change? Is she too hot or too cold? Is she tired or even in pain?
Get it wrong and the fretful moment can end in a temper tantrum because your baby knows what she wants but cannot get her parents to understand. But not Meadow. She tells her parents what is wrong and what she wants even though she cannot talk yet. Despite having perfect hearing, Meadow has used sign language since she was nine months old.
, 百拇医药
When she wants milk she repeatedly opens and closes her fingers into a fist. When she is teething she puts an index finger up to her mouth, then puts the finger into the palm of her opposite hand and makes a circular motion — the sign for medicine.
Signing also enables her parents to glimpse her feelings. Recently, when her father, Nick, an IT consultant, had spoken to her over the phone during a late-night stint at the office, she signed to her mother, Gill: “Please more Daddy.”
, http://www.100md.com
Watching babies as young as eight months old understanding and using signs is a remarkable experience. They are transformed from being enigmatically appealing to being interactive, animated and strangely grown-up. Yet until recently, using sign language with babies was seen as an option only for deaf children.
Now parents and specialists in the US have recognised that though babies lack the motor skills to produce speech, they have the conceptual ability to understand and use language and the physical ability to make signs. The work of the child development researcher Joseph Garcia in particular has meant that signing with hearing children has become popular in the US among thousands of families.
, 百拇医药
In the past six months there has been an explosion of interest in Britain, with the launch of Garcia’s teaching pack due here in March. Converts such as the Cairns family from Gloucester have formed clubs and Web communities, and Kids Unlimited, one of the UK’s leading nursery chains, is training its staff in the system and introducing signing into four of its nurseries.
Garcia got the idea for his “Sign with your Baby” system when visiting the family of a deaf friend. He saw a baby of ten months old communicating in a far more sophisticated way than hearing children of the same age, using American Sign Language.
, 百拇医药
Researching the subject, he discovered that hearing children began replicating signs as early as six months. Earlier child development experts had theorised that babies cannot mentally represent symbols until they are almost two — about the same time they become able to put together basic spoken sentences.
Garcia advocates that parents start exposing their babies to a few simple signs from the age of seven months. So each time a mother is about to feed her child, she should make the sign for “eat” — putting the tips of the fingers together and tapping the mouth several times — so that the association between the sign and the activity becomes clear.
, 百拇医药
Parents need patience to keep on repeating the signs, based either on American Sign Language or British Sign Language. But babies usually indicate that they understand a sign within weeks. By nine months they are usually able to reproduce signs, and once they have learnt a few basics they pick up others more quickly and combine them into short sentences such as “Where Mother?” or warnings such as “Touch no — hurt”. Garcia and his supporters — who include some US parenting experts — claim that signing has long-term benefits. They quote studies indicating that signing accelerates language development and increases IQ, including one that shows that by the age of two signing children have a vocabulary of around 50 words more than their non-signing counterparts.
, 百拇医药
British child development and language experts will form their own judgment on whether signing with hearing babies is just another money-making US fad (the Sign with your Baby pack costs ￡50), or if it holds real benefits for families.
The initial impression of Professor Sue Buckley, a world authority on communicating with disabled children, is positive. Garcia’s theory is almost certainly right, she says, given the fact that researchers have recently discovered that deaf children using sign language have an early learning advantage because they learn more vocabulary more quickly than non-signing children. “Although non-signing children catch up, the earlier you communicate, the more likely you are to get a head start,” she says.
, 百拇医药
The evidence from children who have delayed speech development, such as those with Down’s syndrome, is that learning sign language teaches the same skills — such as attending closely, slowing down, forming words clearly — that are needed for learning spoken language. It can act as a bridge into speech. So parents who sign with their child should not worry about delaying his or her spoken word.
“Babies want to communicate and will move on to another way of doing it as soon as they can,” says Buckley. “Words support thinking and every word is a bit of knowledge about your world. The more you can do it in one language, the easier it becomes to transfer it to other languages.”
, 百拇医药
Others are more cautious. Bencie Woll, Professor of Sign Language at City University, is sceptical about the system’s claims that it can lead to increased intelligence. “To prove that, you would also have to carry out parallel studies showing that stimulating them with, say, music did not have the same effect,” she says. “It could be the intensive teaching that is the important factor.”
If claims that using sign language reduced frustration and behavioural problems were true, she adds, then parents of deaf signing children would be reporting fewer temper tantrums.
, 百拇医药
“That’s not the case,” says Woll. “Signing could give parents something to do with their children, which is nice, but I can’t see any long-term benefit. Signing children might be more communicative for six months than their counterparts, but then everyone joins up. So you have to ask what’s the point?” Gill and Nick Cairns do not regard signing as a competitive tool. They are more impressed by the immediate benefits signing brings in terms of reducing frustration, says Nick.
, http://www.100md.com
“Meadow appears more laid back than her older sister. At 23 months her temper tantrums are fewer and she expresses herself more clearly than her sister could at the same age. Sophie had more spoken words, but only used one word to get her message across. Meadow has been signing three-word sentences since she was 16 months old.”
What Gill Cairns values most about signing is the special bond it brings with Meadow. “You look at a little baby who can’t talk and you see her sign 'biscuit’, and then when she gets the biscuit and knows you’ve understood, her face lights up. You know what’s going on.”
Now Meadow uses sign language with her first words to begin conversations.
“Meadow will use a sign to tell us she’s seen a dog, and then we can talk about dogs with her using signs and us using signs and spoken words,” says Gill. “It’s great fun.”
By Simon Crompton, 百拇医药
Get it wrong and the fretful moment can end in a temper tantrum because your baby knows what she wants but cannot get her parents to understand. But not Meadow. She tells her parents what is wrong and what she wants even though she cannot talk yet. Despite having perfect hearing, Meadow has used sign language since she was nine months old.
, 百拇医药
When she wants milk she repeatedly opens and closes her fingers into a fist. When she is teething she puts an index finger up to her mouth, then puts the finger into the palm of her opposite hand and makes a circular motion — the sign for medicine.
Signing also enables her parents to glimpse her feelings. Recently, when her father, Nick, an IT consultant, had spoken to her over the phone during a late-night stint at the office, she signed to her mother, Gill: “Please more Daddy.”
, http://www.100md.com
Watching babies as young as eight months old understanding and using signs is a remarkable experience. They are transformed from being enigmatically appealing to being interactive, animated and strangely grown-up. Yet until recently, using sign language with babies was seen as an option only for deaf children.
Now parents and specialists in the US have recognised that though babies lack the motor skills to produce speech, they have the conceptual ability to understand and use language and the physical ability to make signs. The work of the child development researcher Joseph Garcia in particular has meant that signing with hearing children has become popular in the US among thousands of families.
, 百拇医药
In the past six months there has been an explosion of interest in Britain, with the launch of Garcia’s teaching pack due here in March. Converts such as the Cairns family from Gloucester have formed clubs and Web communities, and Kids Unlimited, one of the UK’s leading nursery chains, is training its staff in the system and introducing signing into four of its nurseries.
Garcia got the idea for his “Sign with your Baby” system when visiting the family of a deaf friend. He saw a baby of ten months old communicating in a far more sophisticated way than hearing children of the same age, using American Sign Language.
, 百拇医药
Researching the subject, he discovered that hearing children began replicating signs as early as six months. Earlier child development experts had theorised that babies cannot mentally represent symbols until they are almost two — about the same time they become able to put together basic spoken sentences.
Garcia advocates that parents start exposing their babies to a few simple signs from the age of seven months. So each time a mother is about to feed her child, she should make the sign for “eat” — putting the tips of the fingers together and tapping the mouth several times — so that the association between the sign and the activity becomes clear.
, 百拇医药
Parents need patience to keep on repeating the signs, based either on American Sign Language or British Sign Language. But babies usually indicate that they understand a sign within weeks. By nine months they are usually able to reproduce signs, and once they have learnt a few basics they pick up others more quickly and combine them into short sentences such as “Where Mother?” or warnings such as “Touch no — hurt”. Garcia and his supporters — who include some US parenting experts — claim that signing has long-term benefits. They quote studies indicating that signing accelerates language development and increases IQ, including one that shows that by the age of two signing children have a vocabulary of around 50 words more than their non-signing counterparts.
, 百拇医药
British child development and language experts will form their own judgment on whether signing with hearing babies is just another money-making US fad (the Sign with your Baby pack costs ￡50), or if it holds real benefits for families.
The initial impression of Professor Sue Buckley, a world authority on communicating with disabled children, is positive. Garcia’s theory is almost certainly right, she says, given the fact that researchers have recently discovered that deaf children using sign language have an early learning advantage because they learn more vocabulary more quickly than non-signing children. “Although non-signing children catch up, the earlier you communicate, the more likely you are to get a head start,” she says.
, 百拇医药
The evidence from children who have delayed speech development, such as those with Down’s syndrome, is that learning sign language teaches the same skills — such as attending closely, slowing down, forming words clearly — that are needed for learning spoken language. It can act as a bridge into speech. So parents who sign with their child should not worry about delaying his or her spoken word.
“Babies want to communicate and will move on to another way of doing it as soon as they can,” says Buckley. “Words support thinking and every word is a bit of knowledge about your world. The more you can do it in one language, the easier it becomes to transfer it to other languages.”
, 百拇医药
Others are more cautious. Bencie Woll, Professor of Sign Language at City University, is sceptical about the system’s claims that it can lead to increased intelligence. “To prove that, you would also have to carry out parallel studies showing that stimulating them with, say, music did not have the same effect,” she says. “It could be the intensive teaching that is the important factor.”
If claims that using sign language reduced frustration and behavioural problems were true, she adds, then parents of deaf signing children would be reporting fewer temper tantrums.
, 百拇医药
“That’s not the case,” says Woll. “Signing could give parents something to do with their children, which is nice, but I can’t see any long-term benefit. Signing children might be more communicative for six months than their counterparts, but then everyone joins up. So you have to ask what’s the point?” Gill and Nick Cairns do not regard signing as a competitive tool. They are more impressed by the immediate benefits signing brings in terms of reducing frustration, says Nick.
, http://www.100md.com
“Meadow appears more laid back than her older sister. At 23 months her temper tantrums are fewer and she expresses herself more clearly than her sister could at the same age. Sophie had more spoken words, but only used one word to get her message across. Meadow has been signing three-word sentences since she was 16 months old.”
What Gill Cairns values most about signing is the special bond it brings with Meadow. “You look at a little baby who can’t talk and you see her sign 'biscuit’, and then when she gets the biscuit and knows you’ve understood, her face lights up. You know what’s going on.”
Now Meadow uses sign language with her first words to begin conversations.
“Meadow will use a sign to tell us she’s seen a dog, and then we can talk about dogs with her using signs and us using signs and spoken words,” says Gill. “It’s great fun.”
By Simon Crompton, 百拇医药