An 11-year-old nonverbal boy diagnosed autistic was trained to communicate wants and needs with manual signs. Sign training in the corner of the classroom had no effect on generalization or maladaptive responses, while training in the natural setting was functionally related both to use of signs across the school day and dramatic reductions in…

Reports on a study of the acquisition of fingerspelling, a manual system for representing the alphabet, by young deaf children whose first language is American Sign Language. Describes the system of fingerspelling and its use in the American deaf community and discusses the interaction of fingerspelling and signed language. (SED)

A 12-step procedure was used in teaching five minimally literate, male juvenile offenders to read and interpret prototypes of road signs displaying words, and a 5-step procedure for interpreting a sign without words. All students' correct responses in reading and interpreting signs increased and were maintained during subsequent post-checks.…

Presents a list of classifiers in American Sign Language and describes a study of their semantic characteristics. Classifiers are defined as certain hand shapes in particular orientations that stand for certain semantic features of noun arguments and which may substitute for particular nouns in various semantic environments, thereby functioning as…

The mother of a four-year-old with Down's syndrome describes how sign language instruction helped not only to increase his manual expression but his oral speech as well. (CL)

Fifteen mildly retarded fifth and sixth graders were trained to tutor their nonhandicapped peers in sign language. Parent and peer reaction was positive, and the retarded students learned to become tutors. (CL)

Signs selected from lists used in studies with mentally retarded and autistic children and previously rated for visual iconicity were presented tactilely to 13 blind adults and adolescents. Visual and tactile ratings were found to be very similar across blind, deaf, and hearing-sighted adults and hearing-sighted children. (Author/CL)

Six profoundly mentally retarded adults were trained to use 10 signs. Two Ss learned all signs with 100% accuracy without verbal prompting; four Ss learned seven to eight signs, varying with stimulus cue and setting. It was suggested that the four Ss may not have possessed adequate cognitive ability. (CL)

A systematic sign language (Paget system) offering a grammatical means of expression is discussed. Application of the system at a school for the blind is provided. (CD)

Criticism of Manually Coded English (MCE) with deaf children is examined in terms of its classification as a language, its inadequate rate of information flow, and its inexact use. Research on MCE is reviewed, and it is suggested that MCE systems are not being used to their best advantage. (CL)

A program to involve institutional staff in developing manual sign language skills with six profoundly retarded persons was evaluated. Results indicated that all participating residents learned to communicate with signing during structured interactions on their living unit and the skills maintained during follow-up assessments ranging from 39 to…

The Paget-Gorman Sign System, a signed English approach shown to be effective with deaf or hard of hearing children, has been helpful in developing phrase structure in hearing impaired mentally retarded students. (CL)

Investigates sign learning as a function of sign translucency (ease of relating a sign to its referents) and referential concreteness. Naive sign learners attempted to learn a list of sign-referent pairs. Signs high in translucency and referents high in concreteness facilitated learning; low levels of each variable inhibited learning. (Author/PJM)

The author cites research that casts doubt upon the use of total communication as a means of facilitating speech, communication between parent and child, academic achievement, and vocabulary development in hearing-impaired children. He states that the Alexander Graham Bell Association is not antimanual communication, but rather prospeech. (CL)