Research interest in heritage speakers and their patterns of bilingual development has grown substantially over the last decade, prompting sign language researchers to consider how the concepts of heritage language and heritage speakers apply in the Deaf community. This overview builds on previous proposals that ASL [American Sign Language] and…

This study examined the extended discourse used by two Deaf parents with their two Deaf children (ages two and four). The study was conducted using an in-depth examination of parental expressive use of American Sign Language, looking at the use of discourse and the features and contexts that offered the most opportunity for rich language…

This article explores the language of bimodal bilinguals (i.e., hearing children of Deaf parents who are exposed to sign language at home and to spoken language in the surrounding community). In similar bilingual contexts involving pairs of spoken languages, the language used at home, which differs from that of the community, is referred to as the…

This article reports on a correlational study of language and home factors and their role in fostering the development of alphabetic knowledge among a national sample of 3-, 4-, and 5-year-old deaf children. A structural equation model was constructed and tested in an examination of the combined impacts of student age, finger-spelling ability, and…