
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: FRIDAY, March 22, 1991                   TAG: 9103220358
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL                    PAGE: A-14   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: The New York Times
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

DEAF INFANTS USE HANDS FOR BABY TALK

Deaf babies of deaf parents babble with their hands in the same rhythmic, repetitive fashion that hearing infants babble vocally, a new study has found.

The deaf babies, who presumably watch their parents use sign language, start their manual babbles before they are 10 months old, the same age hearing children begin stringing together sounds into word-like units.

And just as hearing babies experiment with a few key noises like "dadadada" or "babababa," deaf infants use several motions over and over, including one gesture that looks like "OK" and another that resembles a hand symbol of the numeral 1.

The gestures of the deaf children do not have real meaning but they are far more systematic and deliberate than the random finger flutters and fist clenches of hearing babies.

The motions seem to be the deaf babies' fledgling attempts to master language, said Dr. Laura Ann Petitto, a psychologist at McGill University in Montreal.

She is the principal author of the new report, appearing today in the journal Science.

The new research strongly suggests the brain has an innate capacity to learn language in a particular fashion, by stringing together units into what eventually become meaningful words, Petitto said.

The brain will progress from one stage to another regardless of whether language is conveyed through speaking, hand-signing, or presumably any other method of communication, she added.

The results contradict a widespread assumption among linguists that the maturation of the vocal cords affects language development among infants.

by CNB