Deaf World as Eye See It

All,

Drs. Linda Acredolo and Susan Goodwyn wrote their response to the recent journal article written by L.H. Nelson, K.R. White, & J. Grewe. This journal article is titled as “Evidence for Website Claims about the Benefits of Teaching Sign Language to Infants and Toddlers with Normal Hearing” that was published in Infant and Child Development, Wiley Online Library, 2012.

I alerted Drs. Acredolo and Goodwyn about this article, and I made a video clip and added captions to make sure that Drs. Acredolo and Goodwyn understand to what I was signing. I posted my video clip to their Facebook page, Baby Sign Language, requesting for their response. Here’s my video clip from YouTube. It is captioned.

You may wonder who are Drs. Acredolo and Goodwyn? Here’s the information.

Dr. Acredolo and Dr. Goodwyn are co-founders of Baby Signs, Inc. and its educational division, the Baby Signs Institute. Both organizations are devoted to helping parents throughout the world experience the many positive benefits that baby sign language with infants can bring.

Linda Acredolo, Ph.D., Professor Emeritus of Psychology at the University of California at Davis, is an internationally recognized scholar in the field of child development. A Phi Beta Kappa graduate of Bucknell University, she earned her Ph.D. at the University of Minnesota’s Institute of Child Development. Linda is a Fellow of both the American Psychological Association and the American Psychological Society. She is a member of Parents magazine advisory board. She currently lives with her husband in Woodland, California.

Susan Goodwyn, Ph.D., Professor Emeritus of Child Development at the California State University at Stanislaus, received her Masters of Science with First Honors from the University of London and her Ph.D. in Psychology from the University of California, Davis. Dr. Goodwyn is considered an expert in the field of child language development and has an outstanding research record, having served as Project Director and Co-Principle Investigator for several longitudinal research projects funded by the National Institutes of Health and the Kellogg Foundation. She currently lives with her husband in Vacaville, California.

Today, Drs. Acredolo and Goodwyn alerted me that they posted their response paper to Nelson, White and Grewe’s paper on their website.

We feel strongly that Nelson, White, & Grewe did not review our NIH-funded research fairly. We stand by our conclusion that signing with hearing babies has a positive impact on verbal development. You can find a detailed, point by point response on our website.

–L. Acredolo, Ph.D. and S. Goodwyn, Ph.D., Co-Founders of the Baby Signs Program

Drs. Acredolo and Goodwyn posted their response on their website.

Response to Research Critique

Whenever a particular idea or research finding becomes so popular that it is frequently cited by others, it almost inevitably becomes the target of “nay-sayers.” Our research on the positive effects of sign language on the development of hearing babies is no exception.

Here’s the PDF file, for you to download and review. PDF File : Response to Research Critique

Thank you, Drs. Linda Acredolo and Susan Goodwyn for taking stand of being our very important allies to the Deaf Community, by promoting, protecting and preserving our most cherished language, American Sign Language.

Best,
Amy Cohen Efron