Deaf bilinguals for whom American Sign Language (ASL) is the first language and English is the second language judged the semantic relatedness of word pairs in English. Critically, a subset of both the semantically related and unrelated word pairs were selected such that the translations of the two English words also had related forms in ASL. Word…

Learners' ability to recognize linguistic contrasts in American Sign Language (ASL) was investigated using a paired-comparison discrimination task. Minimal pairs containing contrasts in five linguistic categories (i.e., the formational parameters of movement, handshape, orientation, and location in ASL phonology, and a category comprised of…

For hearing parents, receiving a hearing loss diagnosis for their child can be a shocking event. For some parents, the diagnosis is the fulfillment of a hunch; confirmation of the suspected, but still scary verdict. Recent research finds that the period directly after hearing loss diagnosis is the most stressful and burdensome for parents,…

This article results from a case study with exploratory traits where the implementation of a graduate degree in Portuguese Sign Language at the Portuguese Catholic University is analysed. With this study we intend to determine whether distance learning models using blended learning strategies are adequate for deaf students at the university level.…

Bilinguals sometimes outperform age-matched monolinguals on non-language tasks involving cognitive control. But the bilingual advantage is not consistently found in every experiment and may reflect specific attributes of the bilinguals tested. The goal of this dissertation was to determine if the way in which bilinguals use language, specifically…

Stokoe begins his seminal article in semantic phonology with complaints about the complexities of the sign phonologies that were emerging at the time. His insight was not just that phonology is somehow meaningful. Rather, semantic phonology suggests that language structures are built of components that are structurally identical to themselves:…

This article discusses several aspects of language planning with respect to Sign Language of the Netherlands, or Nederlandse Gebarentaal (NGT). For nearly thirty years members of the Deaf community, the Dutch Deaf Council (Dovenschap) have been working together with researchers, several organizations in deaf education, and the organization of…

In the first part of this article the authors consider the policies that apply to Uruguayan Sign Language (Lengua de Senas Uruguaya; hereafter LSU) and the Uruguayan Deaf community within the general framework of language policies in Uruguay. By analyzing them succinctly and as a whole, the authors then explain twenty-first-century innovations.…

A sociolinguistic survey of the sign language used by the deaf communities of Peru was conducted in November and December of 2007. For eight weeks, our survey team visited six deaf communities in the cities of Lima, Arequipa, Cusco, Trujillo, Chiclayo, and Iquitos. Using sociolinguistic questionnaires and recorded text testing (RTT) tools, we…

The purpose of this study was to determine the effect of manual sign mand training combined with prompt delay and vocal prompting on the production of vocal responses in nonvocal children with developmental disabilities. A multiple baseline design across participants verified the effectiveness of this intervention. All participants showed…

Early deafness is thought to affect low-level sensorimotor processing such as selective attention, whereas bilingualism is thought to be strongly associated with higher order cognitive processing such as attention switching under cognitive load. This study explores the effects of bimodal-bilingualism (in American Sign Language and written English)…

This paper presents findings from a study on the use of sign supported Norwegian (SSN) in two individuals with Cri du chat syndrome (CCS). The study gives a first account of some selected aspects of production and intelligibility of SSN in CCS. Possible deviance in manual parameters, in particular inter- and/or intra-subject variation in the use…

Purpose: Phonological activation during visual word recognition was studied in deaf and hearing children under two circumstances: (a) when the use of phonology was not required for task performance and might even hinder it and (b) when the use of phonology was critical for task performance. Method: Deaf children mastering written Dutch and Sign…

Recent technologies in the area of video and Internet are allowing the creation and online publication of large signed language corpora. Primarily addressing the needs of linguists and other researchers, because of their unique character in history these data collections are also made accessible online for a general audience. This "open access"…

Joining scholars signaling the need for new directions in Deaf Studies, the authors recommend a more expansive, nuanced, and interdisciplinary approach that encompasses the many ways deaf people live today. Rather than destroy Deaf culture, this approach is the only realistic way to allow it and Deaf Studies to survive. Deaf Studies today…