Elissa L. Newport

Children Need Natural Languages, Signed or Spoken

Sign languages are as different, and as specific to their communities, as spoken languages. They are, in fact, true natural human languages—a relatively recently discovered fact with crucial implications for the education of deaf children, say cognitive neuroscientist Daphne Bavelier and her colleagues. They probe both the profound similarities and notable differences that characterize signed and spoken languages, including how they are processed by the brain, and ask if the “devised systems” of communication now being tried with deaf children can ever replace the benefits of natural language.