Support for baby signing (BS) with hearing infants tends to converge toward three camps or positions. Those who advocate BS to advance infant language, literacy, behavioral, and cognitive development rely heavily on anecdotal evidence and social media to support their claims. Those who advocate BS as an introduction to another language, such as…

A three-month project in which a blind hearing adult learned manual communication techniques for the deaf is reported. The instructional methods and reactions of teacher and student are presented. Finger spelling proved more useful than American Sign Language for the blind person as it enabled the blind user to follow English syntax. (PMJ)

Reviews the book that reports the results of research conducted by Edward Klima, Ursula Bellugi, and others. The book aims to show American Sign Language as a true language and to detail the representational devices that the language employs. A chapter by chapter summary of the reported research is given. (PJM)

Two experiments questioned whether deaf signers agree on the location of sign boundaries in American Sign Language (ASL), as well as where in time the boundaries are located. Results indicated that the deaf subjects were using linguistic knowledge of ASL when making judgments of the location of sign boundaries. (SL)

Presents three sets of data (signs from the "Dictionary of ASL," 1976; loan signs; and case histories of specific signs) that demonstrate the involvement of the "knuckle-wrist connection" with American Sign Language phonology. (AM)

Describes a research project intended to develop a description, within a generative model, of British Sign Language grammar, with particular focus on time expressions. (AM)

An investigation of the confusion resulting from reliance on visual perceptual teachers in the identification of dactylemes (handshapes) in the American Manual Alphabet (MA) is reported. A hierarchy of errors varying with subjects' degree of expertness in the MA is established. This can help manual communication teachers develop techniques for…

A study tested the hypothesis that manual encoding aids learning in the prelingually deaf. Twenty-four adults who used fingerspelling as their primary means of communication participated in two groups of a paired-associate learning paradigm, using eight study-test trial sequences. Those using fingerspelling showed more recall and a faster learning…

Systematic sampling was done of signing between five home-reared chimpanzees who had had 4-7 years of complete immersion in integrating their signing interaction into their nonverbal communication. Eight-eight percent of all signs reported fell into the social categories of reassurance, social interaction, and play. (SL)

mparison of sign language used by Urubu-Kaapor Indians in the Amazonian jungle (UKSL) and sign language used by deaf people in Sao Paulo (SPSL). In the former situation, deaf people are more integrated and accepted into their community than in Sao Paulo, because most hearing individuals are able and willing to use sign language to communicate with…

Analysis of the performance of beginning American Sign Language students, who had only recently learned the manual alphabet, on a task in which proactive interference would build up rapidly on successive trials, supported the view that different languages have separate memory stores. (Author/CB)

Study indicates that hearing impaired residential students are more proficient users of American Sign Language than are hearing impaired children enrolled in local, public school programs, and older such residential students are more proficient in the language than are younger students. (SL)