“MORE” is “LESS”: Sign language comprehension in deaf and hearing children

JOURNAL

OF

“MORE”

EXPERIMENTAL

CHILD

29, 249-263 (1980)

PSYCHOLOGY

is “LESS”: Sign Language Comprehension Deaf and Hearing Children ELIAS Graduate

Faculty

in

SCHWAM

of the New

School

for

Social

Research

Matched groups of deaf children of deaf parents and hearing children of hearing parents were required to indicate which of two glasses contained more or less water. The deaf comprehended the meaning of the highly iconic sign “LESS” across all ages while comprehension of the noniconic sign “MORE” was a function of age. These data, reflecting a “MORE is LESS” effect, were the reverse of the findings for the hearing given speech. When given sign, the performance of the hearing was similar to that of the deaf except for the absence of an age-related increase in “MORE” accuracy. Analyses of response biases revealed differential preferences for the two groups. Results are discussed in terms of the relative iconicity of the two signs and Clark’s Semantic Feature Hypotheses.

The “less is more” effect, originally reported by Donaldson and Balfour (1%8), has been shown to be a replicable phenomenon (Palermo, 1973). Given an instruction to choose which of two model apple trees contains less apples, young children choose the tree containing more. Palermo (1973) tested children ranging in age from 3 to 7 on their comprehension of “more” and “less.” Using number of apples on a pair of wooden apple trees for the discrete objects task, and amount of water in two glasses for the continuous substance task, the children were required to make judgments of equality and inequality. For example, given two glasses containing unequal amounts of water the child was asked, “Does one glass have more water in.it than the other?” or “Does one glass have less water in it than the other?” Results indicated high accuracy rates for “more” across all ages. For “less,” on the other hand, only approximately 25% of the youngest children responded correctly while approxiThis study is part of the research for the doctoral dissertation at the Graduate Faculty of the New School for Social Research. The author wishes to thank his dissertation supervisor, Dr. Keith E. Nelson, and other members of his committee for their suggestions and guidance. Appreciation is also extended to Ira Gerlis, Linda Hayward, Beth Karp, and Sandy Salerno for patiently teaching and clarifying the nature and use of sign language. The author is particularly grateful to all of the schools and programs that provided the opportunity for the children to participate in the study. 249 0022-0965/80/020249-15$02.00/O Copyright @ 1980 by Academic Press, Inc. All rights of reproduction in any form reserved.

250

ELIAS

SCHWAM

mately 80% of the oldest children responded correctly. Importantly, those children who did not correctly comprehend “less” performed as if it meant ‘mmore.” Two explanations for this asymmetry in correct performance for “‘more” and “less” have been advanced by Clark (1975). Both explanations are based on two assumptions. The first assumption is that meanings or semantic features defining a given comparative adjective are added in accordance with a hierarchical order. The second is that the semantic features defining a comparative adjective consist of a dimensional feature and a polarity feature. In the case of the “less is more” effect, Clark’s Full Semantic Feature Hypothesis credits the child with knowledge of both semantic features defining “more,” namely, /+ Amount/ and /+ Polar/, but only knowledge of the feature /+ Amount/ for “less.” According to this explanation, choice of the glass containing more water when instructed to choose the one containing less is due to the child’s misapplication of the feature /+ Polar/ to “less.” The Partial Semantic Feature Hypothesis provides an alternative explanation, however. Accordingly, the child only partially knows the meaning of both “more” and “less,” namely, the dimensional feature /+ Amount/. Concomitantly, a response bias (or preference or nonlinguistic strategy) is exhibited to choose the greater of two presented amounts, with the result that the glass containing more water is selected for both “more” and “less” instructions. Consistent with this latter explanation, H. Clark (1973) has hypothesized that children have an innate perceptual bias toward greater amounts or extents. Such a bias, it is argued, leads to the linguistic bias towards the positive poles of dimensional terms. The signs “MORE” and “LESS”’ are shown in Fig. 1. Inspection of the signs reveals that “LESS” appears to be an iconic or transparent sign while “MORE” does not. A previous unpublished study by this author investigated the iconicity of 30 sign antonym pairs. Subsequent to performance on a guessing task, the 33 hearing college student subjects were required to indicate on a scale of 1 to 4 the degree of relationship between each sign and its meaning. A rating of one indicated that the sign and its meaning were “very little alike” while a rating of 4 indicated that the sign and its meaning were “very much alike.” The results of this study yielded median and interquartile range iconicity ratings of 1.5 ? 1.1 and 3.2 & 1.3 for “MORE” and “LESS,” respectively. Previous studies by Hoemann (1975) and Bellugi and Klima (1976) have attempted to assess the iconicity of presented signs by asking sign-naive subjects to guess their meanings rather than rate the degree of iconicity post hoc. These studies resulted in lo-30% of the presented signs 1 Here

and throughout

this paper

the gloss for

signs is presented

in upper

case

SIGN LANGUAGE

251

VARIANTOF FIG. 1. Illustrations of the American Sign Language signs for “MORE” and “LESS” and the nonstandard variant of “MORE.” The arrows indicate direction of movement of the upper hand for both “LESS” and the variant of “MORE.” For the ASL sign “MORE,” the arrows indicate that the hands are initially separated, then move toward each other and make contact. All three signs are made at the same height relative to the body. Illustrations were adapted from Fant (1964) and O’Rourke (1973).

classified as iconic. A similar procedure was initially applied to the college students by this experimenter. For the comparative pair “MORE” and “LESS” guessing accuracy was highly differential with “MORE” never correctly guessed and “LESS” correctly guessed by 58% of the subjects. Guesses scored as correct for “LESS” included “decrease,” “shorter,” “smaller,” and “compress.” A common incorrect guess for “MORE” by 74% of the subjects was “together” or “meet.” An obvious difficulty with the guessing and rating approaches to iconicity is that they deal with only one aspect of iconicity, i.e., what does the sign look like? Another aspect, and one clearly important in the case of signed antonyms such as “MORE” and “LESS” is what does the sign not look like. Since under natural conditions signs, like words, are acquired, comprehended, and used in the context of sentential and situational constraints, it would seem likely that the determination of the meaning of a sign or an evaluation of its iconicity would be a function of the available referential alternatives. Given a two-choice procedure, if iconicity functions to facilitate acquisition as Brown (Note 1) has suggested, the sign “LESS” should be comprehended at a younger age by the deaf than the word “less” by the hearing. Such a finding might be associated with an attenuation in the deaf of both the “less is more” effect and the strategy of choosing the greater of two amounts. Indeed, support for the latter hypothesis is provided by Furth’s (1966) observation that, as often as not, young deaf children select the lesser of two amounts when instructed in sign to choose “MORE.”

252

ELIAS

SCHWAM

Unfortunately, neither systematic age-related data nor comparable data for “LESS” were presented. The present study sought to provide these data in the context of comparing the comprehension of matched groups of hearing and deaf children. METHOD Subjects: Deaf. Nineteen deaf children between the ages of 3;9 and 7;2 served as subjects. All but one of the children came from families where both parents were deaf, in the case of the one child only the mother was deaf. All of the children had hearing losses of at least 75 db for the better ear (500-1000-2000 Hz) and were attending schools for the deaf. The children communicated in sign or total communication both at home and in their school programs. One additional male, age 38, failed to understand the nature of the task and was dropped from the study. The difficulty of locating appropriate non-multiply handicapped deaf children of deaf parents resulted in the number of subjects per age group and the distribution of males and females per age group being entirely a function of the availability of subjects. Subjects: Hearing. Nineteen hearing children between the ages of 3:6 and 7;5 also served as subjects. All of the children were attending either day-care, nursery, or regular elementary school programs. All the parents and children had normal hearing and none of the children had learned any sign language. All the deaf children performed on the tasks prior to the hearing children. An age-group matching procedure was employed such that, rather than matching individual subjects, each hearing age group was matched to the corresponding deaf age group with respect to sex (number of males and females), parental education (number of children with parents having educations of high school or less), parental occupation (number of children with parents employed in blue collar positions), and performance on the Columbia Mental Maturity Scale, a performance test of general reasoning ability (distribution of age deviation scores). For the latter, all instructions as given in the manual (Burgemeister, Blum, & Lorge, 1972) were administered using speech for the hearing and total communication for the deaf. All parents were required to complete a permission form and background questionnaire from which most of the information used for matching groups was obtained. The data for age, sex, and performance scale age deviation scores for each age group are shown in Table 1. Procedure. The apparatus consisted of two transparent 10-0~ plastic glasses set into %-in.-deep depressions spaced 3 in. apart on an 11 x 8-in. board painted flat black. Two translucent pitchers were available; one small 16-0~ pitcher and one large 48-0~ pitcher for use by the child and experimenter, respectively. Four consecutive blocks of seven instructions (adapted from Palermo,

253

SIGN LANGUAGE TABLE 1 MATCHING DATA FOR AGE, SEX, AND COLUMBIA MENTAL MATURITY SCALE (AGE DEVIATION SCORE) Deaf Age group (No. males-females) I. 3;6-3;ll

Age

Hearing CMMS

CMMS

3;8 (3;6-3;lO)

109 (98- 118)

3;lo” (3;9-3;ll)

(t&-l

4;7 (4;2-4; 11)

108 (106-111)

4;5 (4;1-4;lO)

103 (100-108)

5;8 (5;5-5;ll)

109 (94-128)

5;4 (5;0-5;9)

102 (90-l 10)

IV. 6;0-6;ll (3,3)

6;3 (6;0-6;7)

100 (81-135)

6;3 (6;0-6;7)

110 (101-131)

V. 7;0-7;6 (0.3)

7;2 (7;1-7;2)

98 (96- 100)

7:3 (7;1-7;5)

101 (94-l 12)

(12) II. 4;0-4;ll (0.3) III. 5;0-5;ll

cm

114

Age

15)

DFor each value the mean and the range (in parentheses) are given. *One untestable child.

1973) were given to each child; the order within each block was randomized separately for each child. Five instructions in each block were used to assess the comprehension of the comparative terms and two instructions in each block were used to estimate the degree of response bias in choosing a glass with one amount of water in it compared to another with more or less water in it. The total of eight bias instructions consisted of four instructions to simply choose one glass and four consisting of “Which (WHAT) glass has “x?” where “x” was one of four meaningless terms2 The correct comparative and its spatial position were equated across the four blocks. Similarly, difficulty of discrimination, in terms of the difference in water levels in the two glasses, was equalized for each comparative. A wooden screen was placed between the experimenter and the subject while the amounts of water were poured and measured for each instruction. Deaf children received the four blocks exclusively in sign. Hearing children received the four blocks in an alternating sequence where half the blocks were presented exclusively in speech and half with the comparative terms only presented in sign. Thus, the instructions comprising a signed block for the hearing consisted of all terms presented orally except * Four meaningless signs for use with the deaf were created by Linda Hayward, language coordinator at the Katzenbach School for the Deaf in New Jersey. Four low association CVC syllables for use with the hearing were taken from Klatsky, Clark, and Macken (1973).

254

ELIAS

SCHWAM

for the comparatives “MORE” and “LESS,” presented in sign. Ail children were required to observe the experimenter during the presentation of all instructions. The hearing children were further informed that sometimes the experimenter would use his hands to tell them what to do. The experimenter, a hearing adult, acquired proficiency in sign through a series of courses taught over a 2-year period by deaf instructors. At the conclusion of the study, the hearing children were asked to give the meaning of the signs “MORE” and “LESS,” presented in random order. For each signed comparative the children were simply asked, “What do you think this means?” lnstrucrions. All instructions for the deaf were presented in American Sign Language using signs selected from the Dictionary of American sign Language (Stokoe, Casterline, & Croneberg, 1976). Two deaf informants and two hearing language coordinators from schools for the deaf collaborated on determining the accuracy of both signs and syntax. A sample block of signed instructions is shown below. The amounts of water (measured in 0.5in. intervals) and the positions of the glasses (left (L) or right (R) relative to the experimenter) are shown after each instruction number. 1. --L R “SEE WATER? POUR WATER IN ONE GLASS.” 1 1 (S pours water in) “ONE GLASS HAVE MORE?” If S signs “YES’‘-“WHAT GLASS HAS MORE?“3 If S signs “NO’‘--“SAME?” 2. --L R “SEE WATER? ONE GLASS HAVE LESS?” 3 4 If S signs “YES’‘-“WHAT GLASS HAS LESS?” If S signs “NO’‘-“SAME?” 3. --L R “SEE WATER? MAKE THIS GLASS (L) HAVE LESS.” 2 2 (S pours water) “ONE GLASS HAVE LESS?” If S signs “YES’‘--“WHAT GLASS HAS LESS?” If S signs “NO’‘-“SAME?” 4. --L R “SEE WATER? ONE GLASS HAVE MORE?” 1 4 If S signs “YES’‘-“WHAT GLASS HAS MORE?” If S signs “NO’‘--“SAME?” 5. --L R “SEE WATER? WHAT GLASS HAS LESS?” 5 2 6. --L R “SEE WATER? WHAT GLASS HAS (meaningless sign No. 2 1 l)?” 7. --L R “SEE WATER? CHOOSE ONE GLASS.” 3 5 3 The question sign “WHAT” rather than “WHICH” was used with each instruction for the deaf. This was based on the advice of two language coordinators that young deaf children are less likely to understand the meaning of the latter sign than the former. Also, the sign used for “GLASS,” selected on the basis of informants’ recommendations, corresponded to the Stokoe et al. (1976) dictionary description of the noun or verb sign “DRINK.”

SIGN

255

LANGUAGE

The instructions for the hearing differed only in the appropriate insertions of the article “the,” the copula “are,” and the auxiliary verb “does,” and the substitution of the question word “which” for the sign “WHAT.” RESULTS Deaf. For each subject, the percentage correct responses for instructions containing “MORE” and “LESS” were calculated separately. As shown in Table 2, subjects across ages demonstrated high accuracy for “LESS” with an overall accuracy range of 62-100%. For “MORE,” on the other hand, only the oldest age group (V) demonstrated consistently high accuracy with all three subjects in this group correct on 100% of the “MORE” instructions. The data reflect an increasing accuracy trend with age except for the 6;0-6;7 age group. This group was characterized by the greatest variation of accuracies with three subjects correct on “MORE” 0% of instructions and two correct on 88 and 100% of instructions, respectively. It should be noted that about two-thirds of the children failed to respond or responded with difficulty to the initial part of the third instruction: “MAKE THIS GLASS HAVE MORE (or LESS).” For most of these children, the instruction “POUR WATER IN ONE GLASS” was then substituted followed by the same “MORE-LESS” questions. For the seven children who responded without difficulty to this initial instruction, four correctly made the indicated glass have more or less water; three of these were highly accurate across all “MORE-LESS” instructions. The remaining three children consistently added water to the left or right glass as indicated in the instruction without regard to relative quantity. ACCURACY

Age Group

TABLE 2 RATES AND REWONSE BIAS ESTIMATES EACH AGE GROUP (DEAF) “MORE”

“LESS”

FOR

Response

3;6-3;11

(I)

17” (O-38)

100 (88- 100)

25 (O-25)

4;0-4;ll

(II)

38 (O-75)

88 (62- 100)

25 (12-62)

5;0-5;ll

(III)

50 (10-88)

100 (88-100)

25 (O-38)

6;0-6;

11 (IV)

6 (O-loo)

100 -

20 (O-38)

7;0-7;6

(V)

100 -

100 -

50 (50-75)

“For

each value

the median

and range

(in parentheses)

are given.

bias

256

ELIAS

SCHWAM

An estimate of response bias was calculated for each subject in terms of the percentage of eight bias instructions where the glass containing more water was selected. The medians for each age group are shown in Table 2. The four youngest groups demonstrated low accuracy rates for “MORE” and low response bias estimates. The oldest age group demonstrated no response bias (median = 50%) with accuracy rates of 100% to both “MORE” and “LESS” instructions. Across all subjects, the relationship between response bias estimates and “MORE” accuracy rates was highly significant (Spearman p = .68; t( 17) = 3.8, p < .005). Since accuracy rates for “LESS” were virtually 100% for all but one subject, this positive correlation also characterizes the relationship between response bias favoring more and the frequency of more choices on the comparative instructions. An important observation was made on one female child (age 3; 1 I) with a low accuracy rate for “MORE” (25%). At the completion of the standard instructions her mother was asked to participate by serving as experimenter. Two glasses with unequal amounts of water were placed before the child and the mother (a deaf, fluent signer) was instructed to sign to the child, “WHAT GLASS HAS MORE?” The signs used by the mother were identical to those used in the standard instructions. The child responded by selecting the glass containing less water. The mother was then instructed to repeat the instruction, but this time using any signs she thought would result in the child responding correctly. Her instruction this time used a different “sign” for “MORE” as shown in the lower portion of Fig. 1. This highly iconic, nonstandard “sign” (see Stokoe et al., 1976, for a discussion of standard signs) was identical to the sign for “LESS” except for a reversal in the direction of movement; for “LESS,” the upper hand moves toward the lower while for this variant of “MORE,” the upper hand moves away from the lower. The child responded correctly to two instructions using this “sign.” Three subjects (ages 3;9,5;7, and 6;7) who demonstrated low accuracy rates for “MORE” (0, 25, and O%, respectively) were given additional instructions (2, 6, and 1, respectively) of the form “WHAT GLASS HAS MORE?” using this iconic variant of “MORE.” Accuracy rates were 100, 67, and lOO%, respectively. Hearing-Speech. For each subject, the percentage correct responses for “more” and “less” were calculated separately. As shown in Table 3, subjects across all ages produced consistently high accuracy rates for “more” with an overall accuracy range of 80-100%. For “less,” on the other hand, only the two oldest age groups produced high accuracy rates with seven of the nine subjects in these groups correct on 100% of the “less” instructions. Pooling age groups I and II together, the data reflec. an increasing accuracy trend with age for “less.”

SIGN

TABLE

-

257

LANGUAGE 3

ACCURACY RATES AND RESPONSE BIAS ESTIMATES FOR EACH AGE GROUP (HEARING) Speech

Sign

Age group

“More”

“Less”

“MORE”

3;6-3;ll

loo” (80-100)

20 (O-80)

40 (O-40)

(80-

100 (80-100)

0 (O-40)

(202_060)

100 (60-100)

4;0-4;ll 5;0-5;ll 6;0-6; 7;0-7;6

(I)

(II) (III) 11 (IV)

(V)

100 100 100

-

100 100)

Response bias 62 (38-88) 88 (7%

100)

(O- 100)

(O-40)

100 -

62 (O-75)

100 100)

0 (0-W

100 -

62 (38-75)

100

50 (25-75)

60

(80-

100 (20-100)

10

“LESS”

(O-P,)

-

nF~r each value the median and range (in parentheses) are given.

Hearing-Sign. The data for sign are shown in Table 3. Subjects across all ages produced consistently high accuracy rates for “LESS” with an overall accuracy range of 60- 100%. For eight of the nine subjects producing errors for the word “less,” accuracy rates were increased significantly when the sign “LESS” was used (Wilcoxin T = 0, n = 8, p < .Ol>. Accuracy rate was unchanged for the ninth subject (80% in both modes). As shown in Table 3, median accuracy rates for “MORE” were relatively low ranging between 0 and 40%. Accuracy rates for 18 of the 19 subjects were significantly lower for the sign “MORE” than the word “more” (Wilcoxin T = 0, n = 18,~ < .Ol). Accuracy rates were identical for the 19th subject (100% in both modes). Three subjects (ages 6;0,6;1, and 7;5) who demonstrated 0% accuracy rates for the sign “MORE” were given additional instructions (2,3, and 3, respectively) of the form “Which glass has MORE?” using the iconic variant of “MORE.” Accuracy rates were consistently 100%. The meanings given by the hearing children for the signs are shown in Table 4. All but one of the meanings given for “LESS” indicated lack of quantity (“less,” “low,” “little,” etc.). For “MORE,” of the 19 subjects, 14 indicated lack of quantity (“less,” “low,” “small,” etc.); for these subjects, the median accuracy rate for “MORE” was 0%. For the five subjects not indicating lack of quantity (no response, “more,” “bumping hands together,” etc.), the median accuracy rate was 60%. Hearing-Response Bias. The median response bias for each age group is shown in Table 3. For all but the oldest age group (with median bias of

258

ELIAS SCHWAM TABLE HEARING

CHILDREN’S

MEANINGS

4

FOR THE

SIGNED

COMPARATIVES

Age

“MORE”

“LESS”

3;6 3;9 3;lO 4;l 4;s 4;lO 5;O 5;l 5;8 5;9 6;0 6;l 6;3 6;4 6;4

Less Half Lowest Big Small NR” Small Low water A little bit

Little Low Lower Low On top A teeny water NR Low None Less A little Less Less Only a little Low

6;? 7;l 7;4 7;5

Less None Less Less NR

Bumping hands together Less More Low Less

Low Small Not too much Less

“No response or “I don’t know.”

SoorO),median biases were for the glass containing more water. Across all subjects, 3 demonstrated no bias, 12 preferred more, and 4 preferred less. The bias instructions, both of the nonsense syllable and choosing a glass forms, were presented exclusively in speech. To determine whether a relationship was present between direction of bias and relative-choice frequency to the spoken comparative instructions, the data were arranged as shown in Table 5. Examination of the table reveals that for those subjects with equal relative choice frequencies (50%) the response bias distribution is approximately evenly distributed between preferring greater and lesser amounts. For those subjects with relative choice frequencies favoring the glass containing more water (>50%), however, the bias distribution is heavily weighted toward a preference for the greater of two amounts. Deaf-Hearing Comparison. Across all subjects, the deaf produced significantly higher accuracy rates for the sign “LESS” than the hearing for the word “less” (Mann-Whitney U = 105.0, p < .05). For the youngest age group only, the range of accuracies for the deaf was 88100% versus O-80% for the hearing. While median accuracy rates for all deaf age groups were lOO%, the hearing produced an age-related increase in “less” accuracy.

SIGN

NUMBER

TABLE 5 OF HEARING SUBJECTS WITH A GIVEN BIAS AS A FUNCTION OF RELATIVE CHOICE FREQUENCY FOR THE GLASS CONTAINING MORE WATER ON THE SPOKEN COMPARATIVE INSTRUCTIONS Relative

Response

259

LANGUAGE

bias

Favoring more (>50%) Favoring less (~50%) No bias (50%)

50% 5 4 1

choice frequency containing more

of the glass water >50% 7 0 2

For “more,” however, the data were reversed. The hearing using speech produced significantly higher accuracy rates than the deaf using sign (Mann-Whitney U = 47.0, p < .Ol). For the youngest age group only, the range of accuracies for the hearing was 80-100% versus O-38% for the deaf. While median accuracy rates for all hearing age groups were lOO%, the deaf produced an age-related increase in accuracy for “MORE.” With respect to response bias, the two groups produced different patterns. Each subject’s response bias was categorized as either preferring the glass containing more water (bias greater than 50%) or preferring the glass containing less water (bias less than 50%). The pattern for the deaf was to prefer less (of the 17 subjects with biases, 15 preferred less), while the pattern for the hearing was to prefer more (of the 16 subjects with biases, 12 preferred more); these patterns were significantly different (x2 (1) = 13 S, p < .Ol). The oldest deaf and hearing age groups were comparable with respect to response bias; the median bias for both groups was 50%. DISCUSSION

The results for the deaf children represent a complete reversal of the speech data for the hearing. High accuracy rates were obtained by the deaf for “LESS” across all ages together with an age-related increase in “MORE” accuracy to 100%. For the hearing, however, high accuracy rates for “more” were obtained across all ages together with an agerelated increase in “less” accuracy to 100%. The hypothesis that the “less is more” effect would be attenuated in the deaf was completely confirmed. Indeed, the data are better characterized by a “MORE is LESS” effect. Given an instruction to choose which of two glasses contained more water, the young deaf children in this study chose the glass containing less. Since “MORE” is one of the first signs produced by deaf children of

260

ELIAS

SCHWAM

deaf parents (Schlesinger & Meadow, 1972) this error in comprehension is highly enigmatic. It is possible that the incorrect meaning of the sign derives from the context of the deaf mother signing to the child, “WANT MORE MILK?” or some other object given a relative lack of object quantity. If the sign is made emphatically, as it might be in such a context, the movement of the two hands together may suggest adding one quantity to another. In the context of the present study, the question “WHAT GLASS HAS MORE?” may have been understood as “WHAT GLASS ADD TO?” Interpreted thusly, the glass to add water to is the one lacking in water or containing less. Such an explanation is consistent with Furth’s (1966) hypothesis that young deaf children interpret an instruction such as “WHAT GLASS HAS MORE?” to mean “WHAT GLASS NEEDS MORE?” In the case of hearing children acquiring the word “more” no such potentially error inducing visual information is provided. For both the deaf and hearing groups, the consistently high sign accuracy rates for “LESS” and the low accuracy rates for “MORE” confirm the predicted hypothesis that iconicity facilitates acquisition. The sign for “LESS” appears to convey information about the lack of extent in the vertical dimension. Such information could be used to correctly choose the glass containing less water based on matching the decreasing height of the hand in the sign to the relative lack of height of water in the glass containing less. Such a visual matching strategy (cf. Bern, 1970; Strohner & Nelson, 1974) could not be used in the case of “MORE” which did not convey such iconic information. In the case of the nonstandard sign for “MORE,” for which high accuracy rates were obtained, information about extent in the vertical dimension was conveyed and the matching strategy could be effectively utilized. As Fischer and Gough (1978) have described, signs are often modified iconically as a function of referential context. The sign for “OPEN,” for example, varies in terms of hand configuration and movement depending on whether the object to be opened is a door, a window, or a jar. In the present study using relative water levels, the nonstandard variant of “MORE” and the sign for “LESS” were contextually appropriate iconic representations. Additional procedures varying the degree of iconic match between these signs and their referents (such as Donaldson and Balfour’s apple trees task) would determine the degree of generality of the deaf children’s understanding of these comparatives and further clarify the nature of the relationship between the iconicity of language and comprehension. The deaf children’s response bias toward less represents an exception to the strategy of choosing the greater of two amounts. For two reasons this finding does not refute H. Clark’s (1973) hypothesis that children have an innate perceptual bias toward greater amounts or extents. First, it could be argued that the bias toward less was innately determined. Such an

SIGN LANGUAGE

261

argument, inconsistent with the absence of reliable cognitive differences between the deaf and hearing (Furth, 1971; Vernon, 1%7), would at most seriously limit the generality of Clark’s hypothesis. Second, it could be argued that if response biases were measured prior to, and independently of the comparative instructions the deaf would demonstrate a “more” bias. The validity of this position, while not examined in the present study, could easily be tested. Rather than assuming developmental precedence for response biases as does Clark’s hypothesis, it may be that such biases are acquired through interaction with contextual or other organismic factors. Performance on the bias trials for both groups of children was strongly related to relative choice frequency on the comparative instructions. The children may have simply been perseverating on the bias instructions by continuing to select the glass containing the same relative amount of water as the glass most often selected in response to the comparative instructions (cf. Carey, 1978). In a study by Carey (1978) it was concluded that “less” may never mean “more” at any point during development. This conclusion was based on the inability to obtain a differential pattern of responses to “less” and nonsense syllables. The similar pattern of selecting the glass containing more water for both the spoken word “less” and the bias instructions by the hearing children in the present study are consistent with Carey’s finding. When given sign, however, the hearing children clearly produced a differential response pattern to “MORE” and nonsense syllables. Based upon the low iconicity rating for “MORE,” this sign conveys little information about its meaning. Consequently, according to the Partial Semantic Feature Hypothesis, the hearing children’s choice responses to this sign should be governed by their response bias favoring more. The results both for accuracy rates and given meanings, however, indicated that this sign was interpreted as meaning lack of extent-the same as “LESS.” This is consistent with the Full Semantic Feature Hypothesis according to which the children fully comprehended the correct meaning of “LESS” and incorrectly applied the meaning of “LESS” to “MORE.” Several nonlinguistic strategies utilized by young children in comprehension tasks have been reported in the literature. Clark (1975) observed that, given noun- verb- noun sequences, children employed an order of mention strategy selecting the first noun as actor even when the sentence was passive. Strohner and Nelson (1974) observed that this strategy was modified by judgments of event probability. Other strategies for temporal sequencing of “before” and “after” clauses (Clark, 1971), for selecting referents for spatial adjectives (Brewer & Stone, 1975; Klatsky, Clark, & Macken, 1973), for placing objects in locative tasks (Clark, 1973), for selecting the speaker and addressee of deictic verb

ELIAS SCHWAM

262

statements (Clark & Garnica, 1974) have also been investigated. Based on the findings of the present study it appears that the young deaf child learning sign language employs an additional strategy not available to the hearing child learning spoken language (with the exception of onomatopoetic words, cf. Wescott, 1971), that strategy is to select the response alternative that is iconically related to the presented sign. REFERENCES Bellugi, U., & Klima, E. S. Two faces of sign: Iconic and abstract. Annals ofthe New York Academy of Sciences, 1976, 280, 516-538. Bern, S. L. The role of comprehension in children’s problem solving. Developmenral Psychology, 1970, 2, 351-358. Brewer, W. F., & Stone, J. B. Acquisition of spatial antonym pairs. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 1975, 19, 299-307. Burgemeister, B. B., Blum, L. H., & Lorge, I. Columbia Mental Matut@ Scale: Guide for administering and interpreting. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1972. Carey, S. Less may never mean ‘more.’ Proceedings of the Stirling Psychology of Language Conference, 1976. In R. N. Campbell & P. T. Smith (Eds.), Recenr advances in the psychology of language. New York: Plenum, 1978. Pp. 109-132. Clark, E. V. On the acquisition of the meaning of before and after. Journal of Verbal Learning and Verbal Behavior, 1971, 10, 266-275. Clark, E. V. Non-linguistic strategies and the acquisition of word meanings. Cognition, 1973, 2, 161-182. Clark, E. Knowledge, context, and strategy in the acquisition of meaning. In D. P. Dato (Ed.), Georgetown University round table on languages and linguistics 1975. Washington, D.C.: Georgetown Univ. Press, 1975. Pp. 77-98. Clark, E. V., & Gamica, 0. K. Is he coming or going? On the acquisition of deictic verbs. Journal of Verbal Learning and Verbal Behavior, 1974, 13, 559-572. Clark, H. H. Space, time, semantics, and the child. In T. E. Moore (Ed.), Cognitive development and the acquisition of lunguuge. New York: Academic Press, 1973. Pp. 27-63. Donaldson, M., & Balfour, G. Less is more; a study of language comprehension in children. British Journal of Psychology, 1%8, 59, 461-471. Fant, L. J., Jr. Say it with hands. Silver Spring, Md.: National Association of the Deaf, 1964. Fischer, S., & Gough, B. Verbs in American Sign Language. Sign Language Studies, 1978, 18, 17-48. Furth, H. G. Thinking without language. New York: Free Press, 1%6. Furth, H. G. Linguistic deficiency and thinking: Research with deaf subjects 1964-1969. Psychologicul Bulletin, 1971, 76, 58-72. Hoemann, H. W. The transparency of meaning of sign language gestures. Sign Language Studies, 1975, 7, 151-161. Klatsky, R. L., Clark, E. V., & Macken, M. Asymmetries in the acquisition of polar adjectives: linguistic or conceptual? Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 1973, 16, 32-46.

O’Rourke, T. J. (Ed.). A basic course in manual communication. Silver Spring, Md.: Nat. Assoc. of the Deaf, 1973. Palermo, D. S. More about less: A study of language comprehension. Journal of Verbal Learning

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Verbal

Behavior.

1973, 12, 211-221. and sign.

Schlesinger, H. S., & Meadow, K. P. Sound 1972. Stokoe, W. Language

Berkeley: Univ. California Press,

C., Jr., Casterline, D. C., SCCroneberg, C. G. A dictionary of American on linguistic principles. Silver Spring, Md.: Linstok Press, 1976.

Sign

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SIGN LANGUAGE

Strohner, H., & Nelson, K. E. The young child’s development of sentence comprehension: Influence of event probability, nonverbal context, syntactic form, and strategies. Child Development,

1914, 45, 567-576.

Vernon,

M. Relationship of language to the thinking process. Archives Psychiatry, 1967, 16, 325-333. Wescott, R. Linguistic iconism. Language, 1971, 47, 416-428.

of

General

REFERENCE NOTE 1. Brown, R. Why are signed languages easier to learn than spoken address to the National Association of the Deaf. 1977. RECEIVED:

November 14, 1978;

REVISED:

April 24, 1979.

languages?

Keynote