The ''ba, ba, ba'' sound universal to babies' babbling around 7 months captures scientific attention because it provides insights into the mechanisms underlying language acquisition and vestiges of its evolutionary origins. Yet the prevailing mystery is what is the biological basis of babbling, with one hypothesis being that it is a non-linguistic…

The purpose of this article is to analyze the results of a study of the development of analogical reasoning in deaf children coming from two different linguistic environments (deaf children of deaf parents--sign language, deaf children of hearing parents--spoken language) and in hearing children, as well as to compare two groups of deaf children…

"Theory of mind" development is now an important research field in deaf studies. Past research with the classic false belief task has consistently reported a delay in theory of mind development in deaf children born of hearing parents, while performance of second-generation deaf children is more problematic with some contradictory results. The…

Many students who are deaf or hard-of-hearing are eligible for a signing accommodation for state and other standardized tests. The signing accommodation, however, presents several challenges for testing programs that attempt to administer tests under standardized conditions. One potential solution for many of these challenges is the use of…

Investigates the differences in the use of certain verbs of movement and location between native ASL learners and children of hearing parents exposed to signing outside the home. Describes the children's use of phonology, morphology, and syntax in repeating target utterances. Relates results to interaction of language acquisition and motor…

Handshapes with single finger extension are examined in data from 10 sign languages: American, Australian, British, Finnish, French, Japanese, Providence Island, Rennell Island, Indian, and Swedish. It is concluded that a theory of marking can be developed along the same lines as for spoken language, with only the physiology differing. (Author/MSE)

Twenty-eight college students with normal hearing, naive to sign language, were trained on 30 American Sign Language signs using computer-assisted instruction or a videotaped presentation. Results indicated significantly higher scores under the videotaped condition when sign learning and retention were probed 3 and 10 days after training.…

Some 76 hearing children in prekindergarten classes, half receiving sign instruction and half not, were tested on English vocabulary acquisition. Children who received the sign instruction scored significantly higher on the Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test than children receiving sign instruction. (Contains 15 references.) (Author/LB)

A study examined English grammatical characteristics used in the signing of teachers of hearing-impaired students, using a diglossic continuum between American Sign Language (ASL) and English. Scalogram analysis or implicational scaling, a traditional tool in variation theory useful for analyzing samples where there are a small number of tokens…

Surveys recent literature on the origins of language, and speculates on the history of human language, especially on the factors contributing to the change from a gestoral to a vocal system. (Available from the University of Alabama Press, Periodicals Department, Drawer 2877, University, Alabama 35486.) (AM)

The learning of a list of 20 Blissymbols and comparable American Sign Language signs by 121 nonhandicapped undergraduate psychology students was compared. Blissymbols were learned significantly faster than manual signs, particularly in early learning trials. Results are discussed in terms of the memory requirements of the two systems. (Author/JDD)

Based on experimental research, examines the relationship between American Sign Language and French Sign Language, and sociolinguistic variation in both sign languages. (AM)

Compared gestures of Chinese and American deaf children who had not been exposed to a usable conventional language model with speech of hearing children learning Mandarin or English. Found that deaf children conveyed central elements of motion events in their communications. Deaf American and Chinese children used gestures to express motion in…

This study analyzed storybook reading sessions involving a mother and her three-year-old twin daughters, one of whom was deaf. The mother asked the hearing twin almost twice as many questions as she asked of the deaf twin, and asked the hearing twin primarily conventional test questions, but she asked the deaf twin more gestural questions.…

Examined approaches to studying among deaf distance-education students in Britain who preferred either sign language or spoken language. Findings included that deaf students seemed just as capable as hearing students of adopting a meaning orientation, and that there were no differences in approaches to studying related to students' preferred mode…