An Empirical Verification of the Integral Development Method for Deaf Children

Empirical findings on the difficulties deaf children face in certain areas of cognitive, conative, emotional, and social development served as a basis for the Integral Development Method for Deaf Children. The principles of the World Federation of the Deaf (WFD) relating to the importance of sign language, neglected for a long time, provided a wider basis of this method. The first part of the article presents the method in a general way. The research part of the article examined the results of two experimentally controlled workshops. The first workshop examined the effects of various non-verbal stimulation techniques on cognitive development. The second workshop examined the effects of a systematic application of sign language on communicative and educative development. Data in Study 1 were collected by Piaget's test and in Study 2 by the Communication Competence Scale. The sample consisted of 50 subjects in Study 1 and 60 subjects in Study 2. The subjects were deaf children aged 8 to 12. The results confirmed that a systematic application of various non-verbal workshop techniques that are suitable for deaf children significantly contributes to the promotion of cognitive development and that they effectively enhance and accelerate the concrete operational stage. A systematic application of Serbian sign language influenced the promotion of Serbian speech-language and complete communicative competence, as well as higher cohesion of sign language and speech-language communication skills. Sign language also influenced school achievement