Head Thrust is a significant nonmanual signal in American Sign Language (ASL). It occurs on the final sign in a conditional clause, in combination with a brow raise and a rotated head position. The signal is unlike other grammatical signals involving a brow raise. (Author/CB)

Evaluation of the ability of 12 hearing children (3-year-olds) to use iconic cues to comprehend signs indicated that resemblance of signs to their referents did not enable subjects to decipher the meaning of most signs. Results were applied to use of adapted assessment instruments with young hearing impaired children. (DB)

Describes the spontaneous development of 13 symbolic gestures in a normal infant from 12 to 17 months. Sixteen additional symbolic gestures were purposefully taught. Vocal development was advanced, indicating that gesturing is not necessarily related to poor vocal skills. Data support the hypothesis that sensorimotor behaviors are natural…

Examines the group narrative, a folk tradition that is widespread among deaf children. Shows how the use of American Sign Language elements and traditional group narrative style can be used in developing deaf children's appreciation and mastery of English-based texts and the world view they contain. (SED)

The article reviews a study of interactions among deaf children, their parents and teachers which points out the need for developing early and ongoing contact with the deaf community. It is stressed that English and American Sign Language be given equal status in the classroom. (CL)

Simultaneous presentation of a picture book and a sign language interpreter on split screen television allows hearing impaired children learn from oral storytelling experiences. (CL)

A 15-year-old with severe handicaps who exhibited minimal intentional communicative behavior was taught to discriminately encode three classes of communicative functions. Results suggest that pragmatic discriminations can be established early in a sequence of communication intervention. The S used requesting and rejecting spontaneously in other…

Curricular plans for deaf students include the study of English but not of American Sign Language (ASL). This omission suggests a lack of recognition of ASL as a language and as the communication system of deaf people. Every program for the deaf students should include ASL in its requirements. (Author/CL)

Results indicated that the two treatment conditions (speech and speech-sign) did not differ significantly for either learning or generalization with 10 Down's Syndrome three-seven year olds. The data did, however, indicate that individual patterns of acquisition were evident among the children. Caution is advised concerning automatic adoption or…

Immediate and one-day posttest measures were obtained from 20 nonhandicapped seven and eight year olds in a paired-associate transfer of training task using manual signs and Bliss symbols (often used with non-speaking persons). Results showed no overall difference between signs and symbols in number of correct responses on either the immediate or…

The Communication Record is described as a system for gathering and sharing critical information concerning the communication impaired student's sign language performance. Sharing information on specific sign system, instructor mode, concept content, response mode, and key environmental variables can ease the transition into new placements.…

This model proposes 11 distinctive features for hand configurations (DEZ) in the American Sign Language (ASL) and is based on the results of clustering and scaling analyses to confusion matrices for DEZ identifications in visual noise. The predictive validity, rated similarity, recall, and variants of signs of the model are examined. (DEP)

Discusses ethnic-social variation in American Sign Language among black signers in Georgia. Some of the lexical and formational (phonological) variation observed in old and young signers is discussed. (Author/RM)

It often comes as a surprise to people that many deaf people refer to themselves as being members of Deaf culture. The American Deaf culture is a unique linguistic minority that uses American Sign Language (ASL) as its primary mode of communication. This tipsheet provides a description of Deaf culture and suggestions for effective communication.

In sign languages of the Deaf, now recognized as fully legitimate human languages, some signs can meaningfully point toward things or can be meaningfully placed in the space ahead of the signer. Such spatial uses of sign are an obligatory part of fluent grammatical signing. There is no parallel for this in vocally produced languages. This book…