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President Melissa reminds us why language is important. #IWDeaf2019

VIDEO DESC & TRANSCRIPT: Melissa is standing in front of a blue backdrop.

MELISSA: Hi, I'm Melissa. Last week was exciting as it was the International Week of the Deaf. This observation celebrates our culture and heritage. Hopefully, you've noticed posts on various social media using #SignLanguage. There was a huge increase of posts using that hashtag! Awesome! I'd like to take a moment to talk about language. Oftentimes, people associate language with communication. However, that isn't the only benefit. Using language assists in the development of executive functions — an example of that would be babies knowing where or when to make eye contact or interpreting visual information on signs. Language also provides for building background knowledge, furthers social aptitude, and accelerates cognitive processing skills. Let’s go in further is about how language benefits Reasoning Skills. Imagine a kid arriving home after school. The kid probably wants to eat and to play outside. The kid will be able to deduct that if they go outside to play first, they won’t be able to eat for a good while and be really hungry. Or they can eat now but this will take away from daylight and shorten their time to play. That kid is able to critically evaluate the options and decide which to choose. Language has a strong relationship to a child’s development. When a child has language early on, this positively influences other components of overall development. Thank you.

Video cuts to grey background with the NAD logo quickly changing in different bright colors from teal to white to black to hot pink to green to orange to teal to yellow to purple to finally the official NAD logo with copyright text underneath “The National Association of the Deaf (c) 2019 All Rights Reserved”.