One reason for the presence of manual communication in deaf families and the absence of manual communicationin hearing familieswith deaf children is related to abitter controversy regardingtheuse of thelanguage ofsignswithyoungdeafchildren.Mosthearingparents arewarnedagainsttheuseofmanualcommunicationby the professionals with whom they come in contact. The reason for this prescription is the belief that if deaf children are not forced to relyexclusivelyon oral methods of communication, they will not be motivated to learn speech and speech reading: ‘‘the evidence is .... impressive that speech seldom develops if signs come first’’ (DiCarlo, 1964, p. 115). Some social scientists,
however, are not convinced that this statement is true. Furth (1966), for instance, said that the insistence that the earlyuse of signs is detrimental to the acquisition of speechbecausetheyareeasierfor thedeaftolearnrelies on ‘‘a mysterious doctrine of least effort.... Carried to its logical conclusion, this would mean that infants who areallowedtocrawlwouldforeverlackthemotivationto learn to walk.’’ Altshuler and Sarlin (1963) and Kohl (1966) also believed that insistence on the exclusive use of oral communication with young deaf children has been carried to extremes. A comparison of the communicative functioning of deaf children whowere exposed to manual communication early in life and those who had no exposure to it in the early years should provide parents and educators with additional evidence in this sensitive area.