Abstract
The poster presents findings from the initial stage of our research focused on the socio-cognitive skills of the Czech Deaf children aged 5-10 years. Despite much progress in the research on Deaf children's development over the world, claims about deafness as a handicap compromising children's development are still pervasive in the professional discourse of the present-day Czech society.
Deaf children have been repeatedly deemed to reach lower cognitive, communicative, and social milestones relative to their hearing peers. Our research approaches the study of the Czech Deaf children's social-cognitive skills through the use of a theory-of-mind (ToM) battery of tasks.
The respective skills of more than 20 Deaf children were assessed thus far. Our preliminary findings are presented in the relationship to children's preference for language (Czech sign language x spoken Czech), language use in the education, parents prefer language etc.
As a first attempt of this kind in the Czech Deaf children, our aim has been to document that Deaf children can, indeed, reach the full developmental potential vis a vis their typically developing peers, provided they have suitable conditions for unobstructed communication and the tools to communicate unambiguously with and through a complex independent language in whatever modality. NEBO? Current trends in assessing Czech Deaf children's abilities focus on the degree of their hearing impairment rather than on uncovering their communication competencies.
Their skills in the pragmatic and social-cognitive domains are under-researched. This study is the first step towards designing a sound measure to detect their existing skills in these areas.
Our overall intention is to find a relationship between their social-cognitive understanding and the mode of their preferred choice of communication (i.e., the usage of Czech Sign Language versus spoken Czech).