A severely retarded adolescent boy who had not acquired oral expression skills was taught five manual signs to express a food preference. A multiple baseline design employed across behaviors demonstrated that instruction was effective for all five signs. (Author)

A series of unordered recall tasks was administered to congenitally deaf subjects in three experiments using American Sign Language (ASL). The findings refuted the suffix effect resulting solely from sensory store differences or the effect arising from differences in processing "static" versus "changing-state" input.…

Presents three sets of data (signs from the "Dictionary of ASL," 1976; loan signs; and case histories of specific signs) that demonstrate the involvement of the "knuckle-wrist connection" with American Sign Language phonology. (AM)

The authors describe the results from a study using sign language and the manual alphabet to improve spelling skills of learning disabled second graders. (SBH)

Presents evidence showing that there is no need, in planning or implementing a language program for a retarded child, to exclude nonoral communication. Concludes that consistently supplementing spoken language with nonoral communication systems will not inhibit spoken language development but may well facilitate spoken language by providing a…

Discusses the Sign Language Interpreter Training Program at Arizona's Pima Community College (PCC). Presents results of the 1977 PCC feasibility study ascertaining the need for such a program. Enumerates and analyzes its goals and objectives and lists the required courses. (CAM)

Originally part of a symposium on educational media for the deaf, the paper describes the seven step process for adding sign language inserts and relates a series of five informal experiments conducted at the Instructional Media Center for the California State University. (PHR)

Symmetrical signs were acquired significantly faster than were asymmetrical signs, and touch signs were acquired significantly faster than were nontouch signs. Results of the acquisition of iconic v abstract signs were inconclusive. (Author)

Outlines a procedure for predicting the appropriateness of signing as a communicative technique for individuals with speaking impairments. The procedure compares a potential learner's motor control with those necessary for the handshapes, location, and movements of a compiled vocabulary. A procedure for predicting future possible vocabulary is…

Describes a method for organizing, storing, and retrieving lexical data from computerized files of American Sign Language. The results of sample searches of the dictionary files are presented with a discussion of how these files and applications might be expanded. The lexicon is useful for researchers and teachers of sign languages. (Author/PJM)

Results of an analysis of variance revealed that iconicity enhanced learning, similarity interfered with acquisition, and there was no effect of vocabulary age within the range studied. (Author)

Discusses erroneous beliefs regarding sign language, namely, (1) sign language is one and universal, (2) its grammar is poor or nonexistant, (3) its vocabulary is concrete and figurative, (4) its "signs" consist of simply gestures, and (5) sign language mimics oral language. (AM)

Nine profoundly retarded and institutionalized persons (16-57 years old) were taught over a six-week period to associate gestural signs with a series of pictures depicting these acts and objects. (Author)

Reports on the design and development of video-based learning objects created to enhance the educational experiences of American Sign Language (ASL) hearing participants in a distance learning course that used video conferencing and Web-based technologies and, following the course, the creation of new applications for use of the learning objects.…

Reports on the progress of a project to produce a dictionary of the Jicarilla Apache language. Jicarilla, an Eastern Apachean language is spoken on the Jicarilla Apache reservation in Northern New Mexico. The project has revealed much about the role of literacy in language standardization and in speaker empowerment. Suggests that many parallels…