Modern Sci-Fi - the enslavement of scientific reality to religious delusion

:
: I wonder how realistic that is? After all, these people don't _have_
: a spoken language, and one of the "new" ideas in child care is to
: teach young children a modified version of sign language, because
: their cognitive skills tend to develop before their verbal skills do.
: So the thought of these kids trying to communicate verbally seems
: about as likely as the modern American kid spontaneously deciding to
: use sign language instead of talking.

That's a good question. But do deaf infants in a signing environment
make gestures the way hearing infants in our rehearse vocalizations by
babbling? And would hearing infants start out concentrating on sound,
even if it draws no reaction from adults about them?

Or putting it another way, are the linguistic centers of the human brain
preferentially associated with sound? Doesn't seem out of the question,
but I doubt close enough scenarios have been studied to say.


Wayne Throop http://sheol.org/throopw