Teaching American Sign Language to Infants

Teaching American Sign Language to Infants Introduction There has been quite a bit of interest in the past few years concerning the teaching of American Sign Language to infants. There appear to be many benefits to such teaching and perhaps even more benefits as yet unknown. The following paper examines teaching American Sign Language to Infants. Teaching American Sign Language to Infants The research question to be asked is: What are the benefits of teaching American Sign Language to infants? In delving into this question the researcher utilized Infotrac and Google. Both search engines were explored with the following search terms: “sign language” and “infants.” In relationship to the development of this particular research question one could have many questions that would create a curiosity for discovering answers. For example, one could ask any, or all, of the following questions: Can sign language benefit infants? Can it benefit toddlers? How young would an infant need to be? Will it make infants less cranky when they want something? Will they be able to talk earlier than normal if they know sign language? Or, will learning sign language hold them back from speaking? Should everyone in the family be involved in learning sign language in order for it to work? Would it benefit older children in the family who did not learn sign language as an infant? What would some of the less obvious, or proposed, benefits be? Could sign language be taught by the parents? Should a class be taken to ensure the right words were being taught? Could a person learn techniques through DVDs or books? Will it make infants smarter? Will they b