Using the syntactic priming paradigm, this study investigated abstract syntactic knowledge of Chinese transitive structures (i.e., subject-verb-object [SVO], BA, and BEI) in deaf children with cochlear implants (CIs). Specifically, we focused on the differences in the development of various syntactic structures (within CI children and compared with their typically hearing children) and the possible individual differences during this process. Results showed that both CI and hearing children exhibited structural priming for all syntactic structures (i.e., SVO, SbaOV structure [agent-patient ordering], and ObeiSV structure [patient-agent ordering]) after comprehending and repeating the prime sentence regardless of verb repetition. However, verb repetition induced an intense abstract priming effect in CI children but not hearing children, with the lexical boost effect more significant for SVO and BA structures. In addition, CI children’s working memory capability modulated the production of the BA structure but not SVO and BEI structures.

In recent years, multiple studies have shown that the languages of a bilingual interact during processing. We investigated sign activation as deaf children read words. In a word–picture verification task, we manipulated the underlying sign equivalents. We presented children with word–picture pairs for which the sign translation equivalents varied with respect to sign phonology overlap (i.e., handshape, movement, hand-palm orientation, and location) and sign iconicity (i.e., transparent depiction of meaning or not). For the deaf children, non-matching word–picture pairs with sign translation equivalents that had highly similar elements (i.e., strong sign phonological relations) showed relatively longer response latencies and more errors than non-matching word–picture pairs without sign phonological relations (inhibitory effects). In contrast, matching word–picture pairs with strongly iconic sign translation equivalents showed relatively shorter response latencies and fewer errors than pairs with weakly iconic translation equivalents (facilitatory effects). No such activation effects were found in the word–picture verification task for the hearing children. The results provide evidence for interactive cross-language processing in deaf children.

Deaf children of elementary and secondary school age participated in a study designed to examine their understanding of display rules, the principles governing the expression and concealment of emotion in social situations. The results showed that deaf children's knowledge of display rules, as measured by their reported concealment of emotion, was comparable to that of hearing children of the same age. However, deaf children were less likely to report that they would conceal happiness and anger. They were also less likely to produce reasons for concealing emotion and a smaller proportion of their reasons were prosocial, that is, relating to the feelings of others. The results suggest that the understanding of display rules (which function to protect the feelings of other people) may develop more gradually in deaf children raised in a spoken language environment than it does in hearing children.