ign, Baby, Sign!! by Kristin Snoddon Marilyn Daniels teaching five month-old Paul DeMarco of Woodstock, Vermont New research demonstrates that teaching sign language to hearing babies improves their language, vocabulary, and reading skills as they develop. Dr Marilyn Daniels, a professor of speech communication at Pennsylvania State University and author of the book Dancing with Words: Signing for Hearing Children's Literacy, is at the forefront of this research.
Dr Daniels is one of the few researchers working in this field who promotes having babies learn a national sign language instead of invented gestures or "home signs." She prefers to teach hearing babies American Sign Language (ASL) because it is a recognized language: "In the United States, ASL is accepted and fulfils high school foreign language requirements in many states and in most colleges and universities. Why then would you not want to teach a hearing baby or child the words that they could use later to help them in their academic pursuits? If you teach ASL signs you are giving kids a head start on a bilingual education."
Dr Daniels also notes that hearing children who are fluent in ASL will be able to communicate with Deaf children and adults. But, most importantly, the fact that ASL is a real language is what makes it of such benefit to children's development: "Because ASL is a legitimate language it is stored in a separate memory store in the baby or child's brain. This happens even in the very first stages of learning the language." When hearing babies learn sign language, their brains develop further than those of babies who learn no second language. Dr Daniels explains: "Studies show that even when human beings are in the initial stages of acquiring a second language, their vocabulary is not stored in a distinct memory store," that is, in the same area of the brain as the person's first language. "This means that babies or children who have been presented with ASL or its vocabulary have an additional place for search and recall in their brains."
Learning ASL also furthers brain development in hearing babies, says Dr Daniels, because "ASL uses the eyes to a far greater degree than any spoken language. The eyes develop sooner in young children and when you take in information with your eyes you are using the right brain." All languages are actually stored in the left brain, but when babies learn sign language both the right brain and the left are used. "This is a wonderful advantage because you are using both hemispheres of the brain, building more synapses in the brain," says Dr Daniels. Read more about Dr. Marilyn Daniels research at http://Handspeak.com