Suggestions are offered to help hearing teachers use effective nonverbal techniques in conjunction with signing when communicating information to hearing impaired students. Topics discussed include use of discourse markers, ways of maintaining eye contact, gaining/maintaining student attention, and effective turn-taking. (JW)

The mother of a young head injured nonverbal child describes ways used to increase the child's communicative ability including gestures, sign language, and communication boards. (DB)

Attempts to prove that users of American Sign Language (ASL) do perform within a closed system of manual and nonmanual sign production features (phonemes and distinctive features). Deaf signers are quite capable of creating nonsense words as well as communicating with signers of other languages through pantomime and other paralinguistic features.…

This study examined the prelinguistic communicative behaviors of 48 young Israeli children with hearing impairments (ages 8 months to 49 months). Most subjects were severely hearing impaired. Ninety percent were born to hearing parents. A parent questionnaire utilizing a direct observation methodology in six situational contexts was selected,…

This paper explores the link between sign language research and sociolinguistic theory. It demonstrates how sign language research benefits from a sociolinguistic approach and provides validation for sociolinguistic theory. Previous research on the sign language of the deaf is reviewed, and a distinction is made between "structure-oriented" and…

If nonverbal decoding skills are impaired by cultural expectations and training, the deaf person will be further isolated from social participation. To identify factors that might account for inaccurate nonverbal decoding of deaf subjects, a study compared the decoding abilities of three groups of deaf college students (N=76) using R. Rosenthal's…