The study examined the rate and order of conservation in 24 deaf children, ages 8.2 to 12.9 years using standard Piagetian instructions and procedures in sign language. Even the older children failed to demonstrate control over the conservation concept suggesting the presence of a cognitive difference in deaf children. (DB)

By describing the paternalism inherent in the parallels between the history of Burundi and that of deaf people, a letter to a woman in Burundi with five deaf children attempts to persuade her to allow her youngest to further her education in the United States. (LMO)

Thirty audiologists, speech pathologists, educators of the deaf, and language teachers were asked to sort 60 compositions written by signing and nonsigning deaf students and by English as a second language (ESL) students. The professionals could not sort the compositions correctly but tended to attribute lower quality texts to deaf signers.…

Guidelines for working with the hearing impaired in an inpatient substance abuse treatment program include recognition of the deaf culture, use of a qualified sign language interpreter, fluency in American Sign Language and deaf culture by the primary substance abuse counselor, and patient contact with recovering deaf persons. (DB)

Sixty minimally verbal autistic children (mean age five years) were exposed to one of four language training conditions: speech alone, sign alone, or simultaneous or alternate presentation of speech and sign. Regardless of training condition, pretreatment verbal imitation ability positively predicted the size of child-initiated spoken vocabulary…

To explore training with multiple exemplars, six severely retarded students (ages 5-21) were taught signed labels for categories of natural objects using either three or five good examples. The arithmetic difference between the two conditions indicated higher levels of generalization following training with five examples for five of the six…

Offers guidelines for working with deaf actors and sign language interpreters. Contains useful information for directors wanting to cast deaf actors in roles of deaf characters and to include sign language-interpreted performances of some of their regular productions. (JD)

Games which help hearing-impaired students develop language skills include the barrier game (students help others to arrange items in the same order as theirs); hiding game (students determine objects' hiding places by asking questions); describing game (students describe objects as others draw them); and telephone game (a message is passed…

Discusses the responses of over 100 US colleges and universities to a survey regarding their policy on accepting American Sign Language (ASL) as meeting the foreign language requirement. While some accept ASL, most do not because they do not consider it a foreign language, nor deafness a culture. (SED)

Describes research into the correspondence between speech and sign language by looking at simultaneous communication as it is used by fluent deaf persons. The study aims to determine what relationship, if any, exists between the morpheme level and the message level of utterances in discourse. (SED)

Research is reported which investigated the ability of four-month-old hearing infants to discriminate between gestures derived from American Sign Language. Findings show that infants possess the perceptual abilities to differentiate between signs that differ solely in terms of contrasts along a single underlying movement direction. (SED)

Describes an instrument for objective assessment of sign language interpreters, which used videotapes to assess the accuracy of interpreted output. It categorizes the kinds of modifications made in response to cultural factors, estimates the degree of American Sign Language or English use, and records fingerspelling influence. (Author/SED)

Describes a study that determines if an interrelationship exists between cognitive level, gestural development, and spoken English development in five hearing-impaired preschool children. Results suggest that a deaf child's cognitive development may be related to his/her communicative ability, especially in terms of pragmatic-semantic…

Examines whether, and how, deaf adults adjust their nonvocal communicative behavior when facing one of three audience types: hearing adults who have learned a signed language, deaf adults who use a signed languageand deaf children of deaf parents. (FL)

This digest provides a brief overview of American Sign Language (ASL) and discusses its study as a foreign language in U.S. schools and institutions of higher education. The following questions are addressed: (1) Is ASL a language?; (2) If ASL is used in the United States, how can it be considered a "foreign" language; (3) Are ASL users…