evaluation of phonological awareness of quebec sign language...

Evaluation of Phonological Awareness of Quebec Sign Language (LSQ)

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Phonology is usually associated with sounds;

The issue of a phonological level for SLs is relevant to written language acquisition in deaf children who are enrolled in bilingual teaching programs;

The level of Phonological Awareness (PA) proficiency in hearing children at the preschool and kindergarten levels can be used to predict the reading skills they will have at the end of first grade year (Adams, 1990; Blachman, 1991).

Introduc)on  

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Phonological awareness

Phonological awareness refers to the conscious and explicit knowledge that words are decomposable into smaller units, either syllables or phonemes (Adams et al., 2000; Adams, 1990).

Only one research has dealt with the question of PA in sign languages (Di Perri, 2004)

Evaluation of the ability to manipulate phonological units of ASL in 29 deaf children (4 – 8 years old)

Adaptation of tasks built for spoken languages listed in the National Reading Panel Report (2000) + Yopp-Singer test of segmentation (Yopp, 1992): identification, categorisation, discrimination, fusion, segmentation and substitution

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Objective of the study Considering:

Provide a statistical account of phonological awareness of LSQ in deaf children, teenagers and adults.

Objective:

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IDENTIFICATION  

GIFT

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CATEGORISATION  1  

WOOD LADYBUG 6

CATEGORISATION  2  

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COOKIE CHOCOLATE

STAR

NO YES

ANALYSE  

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Descrip)on  of  the  tasks  

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The  par)cipants  

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Ques)ons  

Q1 Do all deaf groups have phonological awareness of LSQ?

Q2 Do all deaf groups have an equivalent mastery of the different types of tasks?

Q3 Do all deaf groups have an equivalent mastery of the different categories of phonemes?

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Results  Q1 Do all deaf groups have phonological awareness of LSQ?

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Results  Q2 Do all deaf groups have an equivalent mastery of the

different types of tasks?

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Results  Q2 Do all deaf groups have an equivalent mastery of the

different types of tasks?

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Results  Q2

Do all deaf groups have an equivalent mastery of the different types of tasks?

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Results  

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Results  Q3 Do all deaf groups have an equivalent mastery of the

different categories of phonemes?

All groups (adults and teenagers) show the same pattern :

Accuracy Hand Shape > Movement

RT Hand Shape < Movement

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Results  Q3

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Results  

All groups (adults and teenagers) are equivalent:

Accuracy Teenagers = Adults (except for Identification)

TR Teenagers = Adults (except for Analyse)

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Results  

IDENTIFICATION

ANALYSE

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Results  

Movement = the hardest parameter (except for the IDENTIFICATION task, where the handshape is the hardest parameter to identify)

Categorisation 2

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Results  

Analyse

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Results  

Categorisation 2

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Discussion Handshape and movement are always distinct from each other

(handshape > movement)

Graphic representation of movement

Handshape = less variability Location and movement = more variability

Categorical perception (Emmorey et al., 2003)

Access to mental lexicon (Emmorey, 2002)

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Conclusion

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Acknowledgements  parisot.anne-­‐marie@uqam.ca  

rinfret,.julie@uqam.ca  

Écoles Gadbois, Esther-Blondin and Lucien-Pagé

Annik Boissonneault, Michel Lelièvre, Dominique Lemay, Johanne Lemieux

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All the Deaf teachers

Research assistants at the Groupe de recherche sur la LSQ et le bilinguisme sourd, UQAM

Evaluation of Phonological Awareness of Quebec Sign Language (LSQ)

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Identification and Categorisation : no significant difference (handshape and location), high scores.

Discrimination :results significantly lower than Identification and Categorisation, high scores.

Movement = lowest results for Identification and Discrimination.

Movement = highest scores for Categorisation.

Discrimination = most difficult task for all children, (handshape > location > movement).

Globally: handshape, location > movement

Di Perri (2004)

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APPLE

Examples  of  phonological  distance  

HANDSHAPE

LOCATION

MOVEMENT

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Results  Q4 Are they sensitive to the phonological distance?

ACCURACY

RESPONSE TIME

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