This study evaluated employment outcomes of adults who were deaf and hard of hearing. The 200 subjects were deaf and hard of hearing adults 18 years and older. They completed a survey consisting of 20 multiple choice questions and three additional questions that required written responses. The results indicated there were significant associations…

Deaf adolescents who use American Sign Language (ASL) as their main communication mode are, like their hearing age peers, at risk for acquiring HIV. Many sources of HIV information (radio and television) are not accessible to these adolescents. Little is known about HIV knowledge base and risk behaviors of this group. The objective of this study…

In this article we describe an Australian project in which linguists, signed language interpreters, medical and health care professionals, and members of the Deaf community use the technology of the Internet to facilitate cooperative language development. A web-based, interactive multimedia lexicon, an encyclopedic dictionary, and a database of…

Ideas and definitions of deafness are complicated and deeply contested, including the constraints over what ought to be normal, especially for a child. This research examines what it means to be deaf and disabled under the guise of normalcy and deviance. Social control institutions, such as schools, provide deaf children with a unique opportunity…

This article examines sign languages that belong to a complex of indigenous sign languages in Mesoamerica that K'iche'an Maya people of Guatemala refer to collectively as Meemul Tziij. It explains the relationship between the Meemul Tziij variety of the Yukatek Maya village of Chican (state of Yucatan, Mexico) and the hitherto undescribed Meemul…

Two experiments investigated categorical perception (CP) effects for affective facial expressions and linguistic facial expressions from American Sign Language (ASL) for Deaf native signers and hearing non-signers. Facial expressions were presented in isolation (Experiment 1) or in an ASL verb context (Experiment 2). Participants performed ABX…

When language learners are exposed to inconsistent probabilistic grammatical patterns, they sometimes impose consistency on the language instead of learning the variation veridically. The authors hypothesized that this regularization results from problems with word retrieval rather than from learning per se. One prediction of this, that easing the…

Instructors in 5 American Sign Language--English Interpreter Programs and 4 Deaf Studies Programs in Canada were interviewed and asked to discuss their experiences as educators. Within a qualitative research paradigm, their comments were grouped into a number of categories tied to the social construction of American Sign Language--English…

In this paper, the special needs/requirements of disabled students and cost-benefits for applying blended learning in Personalized Educational Learning Environments (PELE) in Higher Education are studied. The authors describe how blended learning can form an attractive and helpful framework for assisting Deaf and Hard-of-Hearing (D-HH) students to…

Language immersion from birth is crucial to a child's language development. However, language immersion can be particularly challenging for hearing parents of deaf children to provide as they may have to overcome many difficulties while learning American Sign Language (ASL). We are in the process of creating a mobile application to help hearing…

This dissertation study seeks to understand how teachers who work in an ASL/English bilingual educational program for preschool children conceptualize and utilize phonological instruction of American Sign Language (ASL). While instruction that promotes phonological awareness of spoken English is thought to provide educational benefits to young…

This article presents the results from a preliminary investigation into the use of fingerspelling in Australian Sign Language (Auslan), drawing on data collected as part of the Sociolinguistic Variation in Australian Sign Language project (Schembri and Johnston 2004; Schembri, Johnston, and Goswell in press). This major project is a replication in…

The last 2 decades witnessed a growth in American Sign Language (ASL) as a foreign language in U.S. secondary schools. This overview of the current state of ASL as a foreign language in the schools consists of a history and a survey. The information on history was drawn from a study conducted by Rosen (2006). This history is followed by a national…

We sent questionnaires to families of all 288 children who had received cochlear implants at one center in the United Kingdom at least 5 years previously. Thus, it was a large, unselected group. We received 142 replies and 119 indicated that the child and family had changed their communication approach following cochlear implantation. In 113 cases…

Foucault's concept of "archeological thinking" as a means of "making it possible to think difference" is used as an organizing framework for conceptualizing the conflict between the multiple, competing social and individual constructions of deaf identity. Emphasizes the social, political, and educational implications of the…