In the United States, one in a thousand children is born profoundly deaf. Despite their inability to hear, communication and language acquisition are fundamental to their general cognitive development and their engagement with their surroundings. In the same way as hearing children do, deaf children, although deprived of language, acquire linguistic skills to communicate. In 1957, Noam Chomsky, the pioneer of the nativist theory of language acquisition, claimed that all humans are born with an innate capacity for language, in other words, a language acquisition device. The fact that deaf children are able to communicate through sign language supports his view for an innate capability to communicate.