Research shows that native signers do better academically than Ss who use speechreading, written English, or manual forms of English. Instruction through a natural sign language is also a benefit, and the transition to teaching through English can be successfully accomplished at about the fifth-grade level. (Author)

Suggested procedures for art teachers which can get results quickly and painlessly in the teaching of lettering for posters and other projects. (CB)

Discusses several neurolinguistic investigations of lateralization in the deaf. Questions frequency of bilingualism among deaf and suggests other factors relating to structural facets of sign language and to sociolinguistic organization of the deaf community also need to be taken into account in order to explain lateralization patterns in native…

American Sign Language (Ameslan) includes sex role stereotypes which implicitly treat females as subordinate to males. Particularly notable is the use of the upper portion of the head and brain area to sign male specific terms and the lower portion of the face to sign female specific terms. (Author/GC)

Describes how a class of first and second graders decided to make cautionary signs to protect their newly constructed projects. Notes that most signs could be classified as persuasive or regulatory, and how some were in the mode of engagement and surprise. (SR)

Focuses on the lexicon of American Sign Language poetics. (Author/VWL)

Responds to an article on the use of artificially developed sign language for the teaching of biology, and discusses the inaccuracies presented concerning the Technical Signs Project, which emphasizes the collection of existing signs rather than the artificial development of signs. Sign guidelines based on naturally developed signs are appended.…

Discusses the use of maps, signs, street numbers, logos, and other types of signs. Suggests that the principles of wayfinding or mapping can be applied to the layout of user information and equipment. (JOW)

Tells the story of a 16-year-old boy who attended and was expelled from the Spanish National School for Deaf Mutes and the Blind during the 1870s. (Author/VWL)

Investigates whether users of a visual spatial language, American Sign Language, also have a separate working memory subsystem for their visual spatial language, or whether their language working memory is part of their general visual-spatial memory. Results suggest prelingually deaf signers of ASL have a sign language working memory system that…

Focuses on the phonological deviance of the poetry of Dorothy Miles, who composed her work in both British Sign Language and English. Analysis is based on three poems performed by Miles herself. (Author/VWL)

Samuel Johnson said it was the greatest human calamity, Helen Keller said she would rather be blind, and A.G. Bell feared that unless extraordinary measures were taken, a new and toxic variety of the human race would emerge. Deafness, the invisible disability, affects only one person in one thousand, but for as long as history has been recorded it…

The present paper summarizes three experiments that investigate the effects of age of acquisition on first-language (L1) acquisition in relation to second-language (L2) outcome. The experiments use the unique acquisition situations of childhood deafness and sign language. The key factors controlled across the studies are age of L1 acquisition, the…

This paper presents the results of research on information structure and word order in narrative sentences taken from signed short stories in Croatian Sign Language (HZJ). The basic word order in HZJ is SVO. Factors that result in other word orders include: reversible arguments, verb categories, locative constructions, contrastive focus, and prior…

The California School for the Deaf's Fremont campus will soon start offering a day program for adolescents with a daunting set of educational challenges: autism or severe developmental disabilities, in addition to deafness. The new class is part of a legal settlement between the school and the parents of a 15-year-old student who believe their…