Entwicklung praktikabler und zuverlässiger Verfahren zur Ermittlung des Sprachverstehens in der Österreichischen Gebärdensprache im Vorschulalter – eine Pilotstudie

Valid and feasible diagnostic tools are essential for the development and evaluation of therapeutic and educational interventions. For children who are deaf or hard of hearing, early linguistic skills are crucial for their further language, cognitive and socio-emotional development. As a consequence, sign language is systematically used in early intervention programmes and pre-schools. There is, however, a lack of adequate diagnostic tools for Austrian Sign Language skill, making it difficult to tailor interventions to individual children and their environments. In the present Pilot study, we describe the development of two language comprehension assessment methods for Austrian Sign Language for pre-school age (0;6 to 6;11 years) and their implementation in a sample of children (n=10) growing up with Austrian Sign Language as their first language. First results demonstrate high feasibility, high correlations between results of direct assessments and proxy measures as well as high correlations of comprehension skills and child age for the pre-school years.