This Family and Practitioner Brief discusses the challenge in translating complex scientific words with abstract concepts from spoken/written language to American Sign Language (ASL).

Studies have shown that iconicity can provide a benefit to non-signers during the learning of single signs, but other aspects of signed messages that might also be beneficial have received less attention. In particular, do other features of signed languages help support comprehension of a message during the process of language learning? The…

The intersectional identities and lived experiences of Signing Latinx are insufficiently documented. Reflecting on my own lived experiences, I began to question traditional research paradigms that often neglected the stories shared by individuals from different communities within the larger Signing Latinx community. As I was introduced to Critical…

Self-determination is a potential predictor of in-school and postschool success, yet it has not previously been examined in youth and young adults who are deaf or hard of hearing (DHH). The present study used a cross-sectional survey design to examine the reliability and validity of the American Sign Language (ASL) version of the…

Research literature and community narratives both emphasize the importance of self-determination in the lives of deaf youth. This paper describes the development, initial validation, and potential applications of a translated measure of self-determination for deaf youth, the SDI:SR ASL Translation (SDI:SR ASL). A sample of 3,309 young people who…

In this conceptual article, the authors introduce the Translanguaging Framework for Deaf Education (TFDE), drawing upon two perspectives on language and learning: crip linguistics and critical translanguaging space. The TFDE is a retheorization of the Language Zone, a pedagogical framework for supporting language learning in deaf education, and is…

Self-assessment skills are emphasized in signed language Interpreter Education Programs (IEPs), and it is well-established that self-assessment is an essential element of a sign language interpreter's professional development, yet anecdotal evidence suggests that practicing interpreters frequently do not engage in self-assessment. This study aimed…

This study aimed to address a gap in understanding the enrollment decisions of both Deaf and Hard of Hearing (DHH) students and hearing students in DHH-related fields, such as audiology, Deaf education, social work, and sign language interpretation, at Gallaudet University. Despite the growing demand for professionals in these areas, only 5% of…

With the advent of online learning, instructors are challenged to engage with students in asynchronous learning environments. This study explored Perusall, a social annotation tool (SAT), in an undergraduate introductory course in sign language interpreting. Despite the growing popularity of SATs, their impact on sign language interpreter…

Spoken language (unimodal) interpreters often prefer to interpret from their non-dominant language (L2) into their native language (L1). Anecdotally, signed language (bimodal) interpreters express the opposite bias, preferring to interpret from L1 (spoken language) into L2 (signed language). We conducted a large survey study ("N" =…

In response to the need for deaf and hard of hearing students to facilitate literacy in American Sign Language (ASL) and to put as much focus on developing students' ASL skills as they usually do on developing their English skills, Melissa Herzig has created a curriculum entitled "Creating the Narrative Stories: The Development of the…

In the present study we aimed to investigate phonological substitution errors made by hearing second language (M2L2) learners of American Sign Language (ASL) during a sentence translation task. Learners saw sentences in ASL that were signed by either a native signer or a M2L2 learner. Learners were to simply translate the sentence from ASL to…

This article describes and evaluates one residential school for the deaf and hard of hearing, Eastern North Carolina School for the Deaf (ENCSD), and their experience in implementing the Fairview Learning program. The program consists of five components (Schimmel & Edwards, 2003). Two of the components--phonemic awareness and literature-based…

Arbitrary symbolism is a linguistic doctrine that predicts an orthogonal relationship between word forms and their corresponding meanings. Recent corpora analyses have demonstrated violations of arbitrary symbolism with respect to concreteness, a variable characterizing the sensorimotor salience of a word. In addition to qualitative semantic…

Recent evidence demonstrates that American Sign Language (ASL) signs are active during print word recognition in deaf bilinguals who are highly proficient in both ASL and English. In the present study, we investigate whether signs are active during print word recognition in two groups of unbalanced bilinguals: deaf ASL-dominant and hearing…