For more than 20 years, two courses, History, Education, and Guidance of the Deaf/Hard of Hearing and Introduction to Instructional Methods for the Deaf/Hard of Hearing, have been taught at Bloomsburg University of Pennsylvania using a traditional lecture format. A state grant provided funding to explore the use of technology to teach online…

This is the story of my daughter, Hannah. Hannah is an amazing child. She can speak, read, and write English. She can play the piano and violin and she is mainstreamed into a third grade class. Hannah was born profoundly deaf and was not diagnosed until she was almost two years old. She received a cochlear implant when she was 2 1/2 years old.…

Inspired by Johnston's thought-provoking article, this article reports from the current Norwegian scene to make two main points. First, Norwegian Sign Language paradoxically appears to be better protected as well as more threatened than ever. Second, success in bilingual deaf education is not logically incompatible with a placement primarily in…

Specialized psychotherapy for deaf people in the Dutch and Western European mental health systems is still a rather young specialism. A key policy principle in Dutch mental health care for the deaf is that they should receive treatment in the language most accessible to them, which is usually Dutch Sign Language (Nederlandse Gebarentaal or NGT).…

This article presents an overview of current automatic sign recognition research. A review of recent studies, as well as on our own research, has identified several problem areas that hamper successful sign recognition by a computer. Some of these problems are shared with automatic speech recognition, whereas others seem to be unique to automatic…

The Educational Sign Skills Evaluation (ESSE) was developed to provide a means of identifying the dominant signing style of an individual and to provide feedback on areas of strength and areas in need of improvement. It provides an overall expressive skills rating as well as information on the type, level, and degree of understanding demonstrated…

A literature-based rationale for teaching American Sign Language (ASL) as the primary language system for deaf children elaborates on the following points: Sign languages are visual-manual; spoken languages are oral-aural. Competency in a first language tremendously increases a person's ability to learn a second language. Deaf children have not…

This study investigated the Stroop effect with deaf and hearing bilingual individuals and whether there is a positive relationship between the Stroop effect and English language proficiency of deaf bilinguals. The Stroop effect refers to the interference caused by incongruent semantic information in naming colors (e.g., when subjects must name the…

The mother and teacher of a boy who lacked speech skills (eventually diagnosed as generalized apraxia, severe in the speech modality) describe the boy's various diagnoses and educational treatments and the successful use of sign language to improve his expressive communication. (LS)

A longitudinal study followed the language acquisition of three deaf infants. Analysis of videotapes recorded in the child's home during informal play was performed in terms of communicative gestures. Results revealed that Ss used a very limited number of hand configurations, locations for signs, and hand and arm movements. Analysis of the…

The author examines the use of oral bilingual models in programs for the hearing impaired, contending that the native language of a hearing impaired child of hearing parents is frequently sign language. It is suggested that classrooms for the hearing impaired could combine numerous languages (Signed English, Signing Exact English, and American…

The paper, one-third of which consists of appendixes, examines the emergence, development, and growth of the Registry of Interpreters for the Deaf, Inc. The literature is reviewed relative to the historical, philosophical, and general forces bearing on the evolution of sign language into a formal language, which was a prerequisite to the…

Six nonverbal, autistic boys (ages 6 to 11) were studied to assess what was learned when signs and spoken words were presented simultaneously. The boys were taught to discriminate among several available objects when given commands consisting of simultaneously signed and spoken object labels. Each of the six children mastered all of the…

The sign language of the American deaf community (ASL) is analyzed from a linguistic point of view. The history of the application of linguistic principles to sign language studies is briefly traced. The cherology (phonology) of sign language is treated with respect to finger spelling, manual numeration, ASL phonetics, and conventions of sign…