Children's ability to share attention with another social partner (joint attention) plays an important role in language development. However, our understanding of the role of joint attention comes mainly from children learning spoken languages, which gives a very narrow, speech-centric impression of the role of joint attention. This study broadens…

Word learning in young children requires coordinated attention between language input and the referent object. Current accounts of word learning are based on spoken language, where the association between language and objects occurs through simultaneous and multimodal perception. In contrast, deaf children acquiring American Sign Language (ASL)…

A brief review is provided of recent research on the impact of early visual language exposure on a variety of developmental outcomes, including literacy, cognition, and social adjustment. This body of work points to the great importance of giving young deaf children early exposure to a visual language as a critical precursor to the acquisition of…

Early deafness is thought to affect low-level sensorimotor processing such as selective attention, whereas bilingualism is thought to be strongly associated with higher order cognitive processing such as attention switching under cognitive load. This study explores the effects of bimodal-bilingualism (in American Sign Language and written English)…

An eye-tracking experiment investigated where deaf native signers (N = 9) and hearing beginning signers (N = 10) look while comprehending a short narrative and a spatial description in American Sign Language produced live by a fluent signer. Both groups fixated primarily on the signer's face (more than 80% of the time) but differed with respect to…

Perception of American Sign Language (ASL) handshape and place of articulation parameters was investigated in three groups of signers: deaf native signers, deaf non-native signers who acquired ASL between the ages of 10 and 18, and hearing non-native signers who acquired ASL as a second language between the ages of 10 and 26. Participants were…

This exploratory study examined the attention-gaining and attention-regaining strategies used by a preschool educator who is Deaf during child-directed play. Four children (2 with typical hearing and 2 with severe-to-profound hearing loss) were videotaped interacting with the educator in two different play contexts. The educator used four…

Investigates how deaf children with deaf parents learn to get attention as a speaker in order to participate in an American Sign Language conversation. Findings reveal that one child's attempts at getting attention demonstrates that while she could perform many culturally appropriate attention-getting behaviors, she was still developing awareness…