Early Language Access and STEAM Education: Keys to Optimal Outcomes for Deaf and Hard of Hearing Students

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Review: Early Language Access and STEAM Education

This article offers an overview of both language and cognitive development of deaf learners with specific focus on language acquisition and language modality. The article is a pedagogical perspective on STEAM for deaf learners, and emphasised that early language experience is key to learning these subjects.  The findings indicate that expanding our theories of language and the importance of sign language and spoken language is vital for academic mastery of STEAM subjects.

This article covers STEM and includes Art into this concept which is much needed. Conceptually, the bootstrapping concept is a powerful concept and metaphor that can be used more extensively, especially at the end. The early experiences is well explained and links neatly with language and cognition (esp executive functioning and working memory). The comparison is made between those who learn English Early or English Later is a good binary to work with here in comparing deaf and hearing groups. While the findings are not unexpected, early language is key, this article consolidates the research with a empirical study to confirm the necessity of early languages exposure.   

The hypothesis is presented and tested and confirmed that delay in learning sign language has an independent negative effect  on STEAM skills. The methodology is well planned with four groups of deaf children, and used PPVT-4, Highest Count, and BRIEF-P  and Give-a-number,  and mapping task, Mr Elephant, Panamath and DAS-2. All of these are valuable test instruments. It would be helpful to make the links between STEAM and each of the tests more explicit, in a table possibly?

The background to this study is both extensive and discusses the field and presents data on the four groups very well. A well written clearly structured and comprehensive article with some minor revisions needed.

No ethical issues noticed.

Specific revisions to do/consider

Ln40 ‘Our…’ specify who (but this may not be necessary once the names are revealed)

 Ln60 add paragraph break

Ln70 Does not (necessarily) determine’

Ln92 Working memory and short term memory, expand on why these are so important for language and cognition.

Ln95 ’Bootstrapping hypothesis’.  Need to have this in the discussion too, to complete the discussion.

Ln120-121 add to the end of the sentence? ‘…., if not earlier and faster?’

Ln145 heading has too many words in capitals.

Ln266 need to say this section earlier

Ln298 cardinality principle, suggest reminding readers of what this means.

Ln307 four groups, suggest a table of the four groups.

Ln537 hearing loss? Deaf is the term used earlier, to maintain consistency

Ln603 add paragraph break

Ln604 ‘it is apparent that [deaf]child …’

Ln610’needlessly magnified’. Explain this some more.

Ln618 is this about literacy?

 

       

Author Response

We thank the reviewers for their thoughtful comments that have greatly improved our manuscript. We regret that the table and figures were not available to the reviewers during the consideration of the manuscript. We have made sure that they are available to you for the next round of review. Accordingly, our responses to some of the reviewers’ suggestions refer to the additional information provided by the table and figures. 

 

We have highlighted all changes made in response to the reviewers’ suggestions in the revised version. We have, upon review, made additional changes that are also highlighted.

We are also providing access to the Open Science Framework (OSF) sites that house the datasets for all of the studies reported (with the exception of the PPVT). In addition to the PPVT report, some of the studies reported have been published in full; for those studies, the publications contain all of the details of the materials, procedures, analyses, and results. We strive to be as transparent as possible in our methods and approach.

 

Please find our responses to the specific comments and requests made by the reviewers below:

Reviewer 1

• The hypothesis is presented and tested and confirmed that delay in learning sign language has an independent negative effect on STEAM skills. The methodology is well planned with four groups of deaf children, and used PPVT-4, Highest Count, and BRIEF-P and Give-a-number, and mapping task, Mr Elephant, Panamath and DAS-2. All of these are valuable test instruments. It would be helpful to make the links between STEAM and each of the tests more explicit, in a table possibly?
• Thank you for your positive feedback on our methodology and test instruments. Figure 3 describes the specific skills each task measures. We apologize that this figure was not available to you during your initial review. We also want to clarify that while our design included 4 groups of children, 3 were deaf or hard of hearing and one was typically hearing (the Early English group). We also found that later access to either sign or spoken language was associated with the negative impact on performance on our tasks.
• Ln40 ‘Our...’ specify who (but this may not be necessary once the names are revealed)
• Thank you for the comment. We agree that specifying who “Our…” refers to is not necessary once the authors’ names are revealed. We have therefore left it as is.
• Ln60 add paragraph break
• Thank you for your suggestion. Upon review, line 60 does not appear to be an appropriate place for a paragraph break. Could the reviewer please clarify if there is another specific location they recommend?
• Ln70 Does not (necessarily) determine
• Thank you for the suggestion. We have added the word “necessarily” as recommended.
• Ln92 Working memory and short term memory, expand on why these are so important for language and cognition.
• Thank you for the suggestion on expanding on the connection of these memory systems to language and cognition. We added the following: “These systems are critical for the temporary storage and manipulation of information needed for complex cognitive and language tasks, including comprehension, learning, and reasoning (Baddeley, 2003).”
• Ln95 ’Bootstrapping hypothesis’. Need to have this in the discussion too, to complete the discussion.
• Thank you for reminding us that we should return to the hypotheses we described in the introduction regarding the relationships between language and cognitive development. We have added a paragraph evaluating these hypotheses in light of our results.
• Ln120-121 add to the end of the sentence? ‘...., if not earlier and faster?’
• Thank you for the suggestion. We have added “, if not earlier and faster” to the end of the sentence. 
• Ln145 heading has too many words in capitals.
• Thank you for your feedback. We have followed the formatting guidelines provided in the journal's template, which use capital letters for section headings. If this remains a concern, we are happy to revise the heading style per the editor’s guidance.
• Ln266 need to say this section earlier
• We thank the reviewer for this suggestion; indeed, we struggled with the placement of this section and moved it a couple of times. We have now moved it much earlier in the introduction, eliminated some redundancy in describing our approach to STEAM and foreshadowing our findings, and provided references to the tasks we refer to in this section.
• Ln298 cardinality principle, suggest reminding readers of what this means.
• Thank you for this suggestion. We added the definition of cardinality principle (i.e., “the understanding that the last number in a count represents the total number of items in the set”). 
• Ln307 four groups, suggest a table of the four groups.
• Thank you for the suggestion. We refer the reviewer to Table 1, which provides the sample size for each subgroup, as well as to Figure 1 (Project 1) and Figure 2 (Project 2), which show the ages of participants in each subgroup.
• Ln537 hearing loss? Deaf is the term used earlier, to maintain consistency
• Thank you for noting this. While we initially used “hearing loss” to align with the terminology in the cited article, we have updated the phrasing to “deaf and hard of hearing” to maintain consistency with our own usage throughout the manuscript.
• Ln603 add paragraph break
• Thank you for your suggestion. We added a paragraph break. 
• Ln604 ‘it is apparent that [deaf]child ...’
• Thank you for catching this. We added “deaf.” 
• Ln610’ needlessly magnified’. Explain this some more.
• We have edited the sentence as follows: “Thus, given this body of knowledge, the negative impact of delays in providing access to sign language are avoidable and unnecessary.”
• Ln618 is this about literacy?
• The Lillo-Martin & Henner (2021) study shows that when deaf children are exposed to a sign language from birth (as typically hearing children are exposed to spoken languages from birth), they follow a similar developmental trajectory in their language development: broadly, babbling, one-word/sign stage, two-word/sign stage, simple sentences, complex sentences. We are not referring to literacy in a written language here.

Reviewer 2 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

This is a good article, with good coverage of the literature (recent publications, deaf authors, culture considerations), a detailed overview of the data collection process, and an interesting presentation of the results with practical recommendations (the development of an integrated STEAM curriculum, that is strength-based--visually, that engages, values, and supports deaf children). 

I encourage the author(s) to consider the following: 

1) Include a brief positionality statement, which could impact a few study dimensions. Is/are the authors/research team deaf, hearing, mixed, interpreters, educators, psychologists, neuroscientits? This could influence the recruitment of participants and the native/fluent signers who introduced the tasks and instructions to the participants. 
2) Along that line, a more detailed explanation of who the native/fluent signers were (e.g., educators, psychologists, deaf or hearing interpreters)
3) Include a more detailed explanation as to the age overlap for project 1 (3-7) and 2 (5-9). The fact that the groups Early and Late ASL are separated by language exposure from birth to any time after birth is clear. The reason there is an overlap of 2 years is not (did recruited children only participate in one project?) could be explained in more detail.

Comments on the Quality of English Language

Some sentences are grammatically correct but are clunky, long, or can cause confusion or challenges for readers. For example:

Myriad definitions for STEAM exist; Perignat and Katz-Buonincontro 
(2019) conducted an integrative review of studies that categorized the studies into empirical, descriptive (that is, STEAM in practice), and pedagogical.

While the authors in both studies noted the age and hearing 167
levels of the deaf students (Bull additionally reports age of onset of deafness and prefer- 168
ence for signed/spoken communication), neither study included any information about 169
the participants’ early language experiences; thus, we cannot know what role this factor 170
may have played in the deaf students’ performance.

Author Response

We thank the reviewers for their thoughtful comments that have greatly improved our manuscript. We regret that the table and figures were not available to the reviewers during the consideration of the manuscript. We have made sure that they are available to you for the next round of review. Accordingly, our responses to some of the reviewers’ suggestions refer to the additional information provided by the table and figures. 

We have highlighted all changes made in response to the reviewers’ suggestions in the revised version. We have, upon review, made additional changes that are also highlighted.

We are also providing access to the Open Science Framework (OSF) sites that house the datasets for all of the studies reported (with the exception of the PPVT). In addition to the PPVT report, some of the studies reported have been published in full; for those studies, the publications contain all of the details of the materials, procedures, analyses, and results. We strive to be as transparent as possible in our methods and approach.

Please find our responses to the specific comments and requests made by the reviewers below:

Reviewer 2 

• 1) Include a brief positionality statement, which could impact a few study dimensions. Is/are the authors/research team deaf, hearing, mixed, interpreters, educators, psychologists, neuroscientists? This could influence the recruitment of participants and the native/fluent signers who introduced the tasks and instructions to the participants. 2) Along that line, a more detailed explanation of who the native/fluent signers were (e.g., educators, psychologists, deaf or hearing interpreters)
• Thank you for this suggestion to clarify our team’s positionality. We added the following to the Methods: The research team was led by a hearing coda who is a developmental psychologist and sign language linguist; the team included both deaf and hearing team members. The research coordinator who oversaw all recruitment efforts was a fluent hearing signer who came from a deaf signing family. The tasks and instructions were developed by the principal investigator (coda) in conjunction with deaf and hearing graduate students and research assistants. Importantly, deaf team members who are proficient signers interacted directly with all of the signing deaf children who participated, giving them instructions, answering their questions, and encouraging them in the tasks. Hearing team members who could sign served as camera operators and in support roles. No interpreters were used in any stage of the project.
• 3) Include a more detailed explanation as to the age overlap for project 1 (3-7) and 2 (5-9). The fact that the groups Early and Late ASL are separated by language exposure from birth to any time after birth is clear. The reason there is an overlap of 2 years is not (did recruited children only participate in one project?) could be explained in more detail.
• Thank you for these comments, it is a good reminder that one can get too immersed in a project and forget that others do not know all of the context. We plan to add the following text to clarify the relationship between Projects 1 and 2; please let us know if this helps.
• We added the following to the manuscript: Project 1 focused on the developmental trajectory of the acquisition of the count word/signs and their meanings by young children (mostly of preschool age, though we extended the age range to be from 3-7 years due to the pervasiveness of later access to language experienced by deaf and hard of hearing children). Project 2 focused on how children learn how to ‘translate’ among the different representational formats used for quantities: displays of objects; the count words/signs; Arabic numerals; and the written number words in English. Because children generally begin to acquire Arabic numerals and written number words in kindergarten and first grade, the range for this set of tasks was slightly older, 5-10 years of age. Children could participate in both sets of tasks, but the overall project was not designed as a longitudinal task. Forty-four children participated in both Project 1 and Project 2. 
• Some sentences are grammatically correct but are clunky, long, or can cause confusion or challenges for readers. For example: Myriad definitions for STEAM exist; Perignat and Katz-Buonincontro (2019) conducted an integrative review of studies that categorized the studies into empirical, descriptive (that is, STEAM in practice), and pedagogical. 
• Thank you for noting this, we have simplified the sentence referred to and also gone through the manuscript and edited other long and complex sentences.

Reviewer 3 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Please see the attached file

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Author Response

We thank the reviewers for their thoughtful comments that have greatly improved our manuscript. We regret that the table and figures were not available to the reviewers during the consideration of the manuscript. We have made sure that they are available to you for the next round of review. Accordingly, our responses to some of the reviewers’ suggestions refer to the additional information provided by the table and figures. 

We have highlighted all changes made in response to the reviewers’ suggestions in the revised version. We have, upon review, made additional changes that are also highlighted.

We are also providing access to the Open Science Framework (OSF) sites that house the datasets for all of the studies reported (with the exception of the PPVT). In addition to the PPVT report, some of the studies reported have been published in full; for those studies, the publications contain all of the details of the materials, procedures, analyses, and results. We strive to be as transparent as possible in our methods and approach.

Please find our responses to the specific comments and requests made by the reviewers below:

Reviewer 3

• Tables and Figures: The manuscript references tables and figures that are not included in the submission. I recommend either incorporating these missing elements or removing the corresponding references from the text (e.g., page 8, lines 365 and 373).
• We apologize for the oversight and thank the reviewer for pointing this out. The missing tables and figures have now been included in the submission.
• Participants:
  • We apologize, we did include information about the participant numbers, groupings, and ages in a table and two figures, but these were not included in the materials you received.
  • We added to the manuscript the explanation that “Because this was the first large-scale study to compare numerical cognition development in deaf and hard of hearing children with that in typically hearing peers”, we made the decision to exclude children with additional disabilities from both groups. The continued lack of research attention to number and cognitive development in deaf and hard of hearing children with additional disabilities is an urgent issue, and in hindsight, we would have made a different decision.  
  • Parents participated by reviewing and signing the consent form, completing a background questionnaire that asked about the etiology of the child’s deafness, hearing levels, family language use, and demographic information. Parents also completed the BRIEF assessment of their child’s executive functioning. We now include this information in the additional context and details provided regarding the testing logistics in the procedures section.
• Including a table that provides a clear description of the participants and their respective groupings would be beneficial for enhancing the clarity and organization of the manuscript.
• You also noted that children with additional disabilities were not included in the study. It is important to provide a clear justification for this exclusion.
• In page 9, lines 447-448, you refer to parents’ responses. However, in the section describing the participants, parents are not mentioned. The reader suddenly realizes that parents are also participating in the study. It is important to also mention the parents if they participated. 
• Tools: I recommend including a dedicated section outlining the assessment tools utilized in the study, along with relevant information about each. It is also important to specify whether the full assessment tools were used or only selected components. If only parts of the tools were used, please clearly indicate which sections were included and provide a rationale for their selection. 
• Figure 3 lists the assessments used to test each skill. The standardized measures used are the Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test (PPVT, fourth edition), the BRIEF-P, and the DAS-II Picture Similarities Subtest. These tasks are listed in bold typeface in Figure 3 and the relevant subtest is given for the DAS (Picture Similarities). We added information about how we adapted the PPVT for the current research design; more details are available in the published report of that work.
• Data analysis: lines 330-332, you refer to the analysis. I recommend presenting this content in a separate, clearly-defined section with additional detail. 

• This paper is intended to be an overview of the entire project; Readers can refer to the published reports to learn the details of the analyses and results.

• Clarify the rationale for including the specific factors (i.e., family socioeconomic status). 

• The prior literature on a given research question or skill has usually identified a constellation of factors that are hypothesized to influence performance on a given task. We used this information to guide the inclusion of factors in our models for each study.

• Please clearly describe how the data analysis was conducted and specify the tools or software used. 

• We generally used linear and logistic regression analyses using the R open-source platform or SPSS. We have now indicated in the results section for each study which tests were used and which tools or software were used.

• Stages of study. Include a separate section that outlines the stages of the study in a clear and structured manner 

• We believe that Table 1 clearly presents this information (and apologize that you did not receive it).

• Describe any preparatory actions taken to ensure the children were adequately prepared to engage with the assessment procedures 
  • Added: “in a private and distraction-free room” and “The research team generally spent multiple days at the schools.”
  • Added: “We followed a general task order, but the research team remained responsive to each child's attentional state and occasionally substituted tasks to maintain engagement. Children were offered breaks upon request or when they appeared to benefit from one.”
  • Added: “All tasks took approximately 60 minutes to complete. Some children finished in a single session, while others returned for a second session. The research team remained flexible and responsive to students' and teachers' needs, adjusting around class schedules and lunch periods as needed.”
  • Added: “All sessions were videotaped and scored offline.”
• Added: “The experimenter engaged the child in brief, friendly conversation to build rapport and confirm their willingness to participate. Both projects began with lower-stakes tasks to ease the child into the session: Project 1 started with a counting task, while Project 2 began with a mapping task involving nonlinguistic instructions. To clarify expectations for the mapping task, children observed another peer completing it from both third-person and first-person perspectives.”
• Added: “Anyone who interacted with the deaf participants was a signer.”
• Added: “Parents received colorful, engaging brochures written in plain-text English and Spanish that summarized the research questions and invited their children to participate. The brochures included contact information—via telephone, videophone, and email—enabling communication with the research team in English, ASL, and Spanish.”
• Setting
• Procedures for using assessment tools
• Duration of each assessment session
• Methods used to record the children’s responses
• RESULTS
  • For each study we have made it more clear in the text where the review of the literature ends and the reporting of our own findings begins. We have also marked this transition by creating a new paragraph when we describe our own results. 
• Include a clearly defined section titled RESULTS to allow for greater clarity and understanding. Drawing connections between our results and previous research is more appropriately placed in a “Discussion” section. Combining the description of our results with references to other studies makes the manuscript difficult to follow and detracts from the clarity of your own findings. Additionally, referencing previous studies without clearly distinguishing your own results may obscure the unique contributions of your research
• Other: In section 1.7, “The promise of STEAM for deaf and hard of hearing learners” it is important that what you write is documented by the relevant bibliography.
• See above in response to Reviewer 1: We have moved this section earlier in the manuscript, streamlined it, and included the requested citations.
• Reference List: Please provide the references according to the journal’s guidelines 
• We have provided the references in APA format, per the guidance of the editor.

Round 2

Reviewer 3 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Thank you for the improvements you made.

I believe that it would be better to distinguish the tools employed in your research from the methodological processes and research stages. This separation would contribute to a more structured presentation and improve the clarity and comprehensibility of your work.

Author Response

Please distinguish the tools employed in your research from the methodological processes and research stages. This separation would contribute to a more structured presentation and improve the clarity and comprehensibility of your work.

Thank you for this suggestion. We have reorganized the reporting of the tasks, results, and discussion according to the reviewer's suggestion.

Please note that we have re-ordered the figures as a consequence of this reorganization. Figure 3 is now Figure 1  (list of tasks); and Figures 1 and 2 that showed the age distributions for the participant subgroups have also changed: Figure 1 for Project 1 is now Figure 2 and the old Figure 2 for Project 2 is now Figure 3. The relative placement in the maunscript and the references to the figures have all been adjusted accordingly.