The Acquisition of Visual Spatial Script

TLDR: The authors discusses the writing errors of normal Chinese children and deaf Chinese children who have learned to use the Hong Kong sign language that has its own principles of word formation and syntax, independent of spoken Chinese.

Abstract: Publisher Summary This chapter discusses the writing errors of normal Chinese children and deaf Chinese children who have learned to use the Hong Kong sign language that has its own principles of word formation and syntax, independent of spoken Chinese. The normal children made a number of errors involving phonetic confusions that tended to be absent in the deaf children, thereby suggesting different mediators for the script. The deaf children made sign-based errors less frequently found in normal children. These sign-based errors may reflect the formation principles of the Hong Kong sign language and the structure of Chinese characters that allowed the opportunity for these errors to occur. The deaf children used principles of sign construction borrowed from the Hong Kong sign language and applied them to the written form of Chinese they were learning. This is possible because sign and script are both languages that utilize space in the creation of their formal units. Thus, the recall of written forms of language has a close relationship with the mediators of language.