A Deep Learning based approach to classification of Baby Sign Language images

Baby Sign Language is used by hearing parents to hearing infants as a preverbal communication which reduce frustration of parents and accelerated learning in babies, increases parent-child bonding, and lets babies communicate vital information, such as if they are hurt or hungry is known as a Baby Sign Language . In the current research work, a study of various existing sign language has been carried out as literature and then after realizing that there is no dataset available for Baby Sign Language, we have created a static dataset for 311 baby signs, which were classified using a MobileNet V1, pretrained Convolution Neural Network [CNN].The focus of the paper is to analyze the effect of Gradient Descent based optimizers, Adam and its variants, Rmsprop optimizers on fine-tuned pretrained CNN model MobileNet V1 that has been trained using customized dataset. The optimizers are used to train and test on MobileNet for 100 epochs on the dataset created for 311 baby Signs. These 10 optimizers Adadelta, Adam, Adamax, SGD, Adagrad, RMSProp were compared based on their processing time.

Challenges and Opportunities With Deaf Multilingual Learners

There are an estimated 34 million children worldwide with hearing loss greater than 40dB. As around 90% of children who are Deaf/Hard-of-Hearing (DHH) are born to parents with typical hearing there are often questions of what language the child who is DHH could and should learn. For the 90% of typically hearing parents who had no prior knowledge of sign language, the idea of having to learn another language to use with their children can be very daunting. Additionally, as the world becomes more bi/multilingual, many children who are DHH may live in a culturally and linguistically diverse community where the home language is not the same language as the community at large; these children are known as DHH Multilingual Learners (DMLs). This can cause additional potential language and cultural learning constraints on immigrant parents who are not yet familiar with their new community's spoken language(s) and culture(s). This results in an increased need for culturally competent professionals to work with DMLs to provide effective interventions.

Theory of Mind (ToM) Development in Thai Deaf Children

This study explored theory of mind (ToM) development in school-aged deaf children. To address new questions, we gave a standard, well-controlled false-belief test to a large (n = 200) sample of severely-to-profoundly deaf children aged 8–15 years in a non-Western culture (Thailand). There were 190 deaf children of hearing parents and 10 deaf native signers with signing deaf parents, consistent with overall population ratios. Comparing our Thai sample’s ToM performance on standard tests of false-belief understanding with that reported in past studies, our results showed a 67% ToM success rate for Thai severely-to-profoundly deaf children of hearing parents similar to collective findings from past research on smaller samples in Australia, Estonia, France, Great Britain, Sweden, and the United States. Our Thai deaf native signers likewise performed equivalently to native signers of similar age studied in past research in Australia and the United States. Collectively, the detailed findings of our study suggest promising new directions for future studies to pursue in order to build upon this novel and theoretically provocative evidence about how ToM development and ToM delay unfold for school-aged deaf children growing up in varied cultures, school settings, and family circumstances.

Theory-of-Mind Development in Young Deaf Children With Early Hearing Provisions

Deaf and hard-of-hearing (DHH) children born to hearing parents have profound theory-of-mind (ToM) delays, yet little is known about how providing hearing assistance early in life, through cochlear implants and hearing aids, influences their ToM development. We thus addressed (a) whether young DHH children with early hearing provision developed ToM differently than older children did in previous research and (b) what ToM understandings characterize this understudied population. Findings from 84 three- to six-year-old DHH children primarily acquiring spoken language demonstrated that accumulated hearing experience influenced their ToM, as measured by a five-step ToM scale. Moreover, language abilities mediated this developmental relationship: Children with more advanced language abilities, because of more time using cochlear implants and hearing aids, had better ToM growth. These findings demonstrate the crucial relationships among hearing, language, and ToM for DHH children acquiring spoken language, thereby addressing theoretical and practical questions about ToM development.

Exploring the Types of Stories Hearing Parents Tell About Rearing their Children who use Cochlear Implants

Objectives. The majority of children born in the United States with hearing loss are born to parents with hearing. Many of these parents ultimately choose cochlear implantation for their children. There are now decades of research showing that these children’s speech, language, listening, and education, seem to benefit from cochlear implantation. To date, however, we know little about the experiences of the parents who guided these children throughout their journeys. We propose that elucidating the types of stories these parents tell is a first step toward understanding their varied experiences and has the potential to ultimately improve healthcare outcomes for both children and their families. Thus, to better understand parents’ experience, we asked the following research question: what types of stories do parents with hearing tell about rearing their children with hearing loss who use cochlear implants? Design. In this prospective qualitative study, we employed a narrative approach. Specifically, we conducted narrative interviews with 20 hearing parents who are rearing young children (mean age = 5.4 years) born with hearing loss who use cochlear implants. We then used thematic narrative analysis to identify recurring themes throughout the narratives that coalesced into the types of stories parents told about their experiences. Results. Thematic narrative analysis revealed five story types: (1) stories of personal growth, (2) proactive stories, (3) stories of strain and inundation, (4) detached stories, and (5) stories of persistence. Conclusions. In the present study, different types of stories emerged from parents’ experiences that share common events—a family’s baby is identified at birth with unexpected permanent hearing loss, the family chooses to pursue cochlear implantation for their child, and then the family raises said pediatric cochlear implant user into adulthood. Despite these similarities, the stories also varied in their sensemaking. Some parents told stories in which a positive life narrative turned bad whereas others told stories in which a narrative of surviving turned into one of thriving. These findings specifically contribute to the field of hearing healthcare by providing professionals with insight into parents’ sensemaking via the types of stories they shared centered on their perceptions and experiences following their child’s diagnosis of hearing loss and their decision to pursue cochlear implantation.