We report the first study on pronoun use by an under-studied research population, children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) exposed to American Sign Language from birth by their deaf parents. Personal pronouns cause difficulties for hearing children with ASD, who sometimes reverse or avoid them. Unlike speech pronouns, sign pronouns are…

Signed languages continue to be a key element of deaf education programs that incorporate a bilingual approach to teaching and learning. In order to monitor the success of bilingual deaf education programs, and in particular to monitor the progress of children acquiring signed language, it is essential to develop an assessment tool of signed…

Students who are deaf and use sign language frequently have language delays that affect their literacy skills. Students who use American Sign Language (ASL) often lack fluent language models in both the home and school settings, delaying both the development of a first language and the development of literacy in printed English. Mediated and…

Re-examination of data on noun-verb pair comprehension and production in Australian and American Sign Language confirm the existence of formationally related noun-verb pairs in Auslan in which the verb displays a single movement and the noun displays a repeated movement. Overall, the derivational process appears closely linked to an iconic base…

Thirty children (ages 3-9) with deafness were asked to sign a story in American Sign Language. Qualitative differences were found between native and early signers on measures relating to the aspectual complexity of signs but not on measures relating to the complexity of the utterance. (Author/CR)

Analysis of spontaneous storytelling samples of deaf 5- to 7-year-olds (N=15), all exposed to manually coded English for some time, differentially showed characteristics more consistent with either English or Sign Language in the language areas of explicit relations, mimed relations, incorporated relations, and English Functors. (CB)

Some deaf interpreting strategies are offered to parents of children who are deaf or hard of hearing. Parents are urged to utilize space in their interpreting, use name signs, utilize sight lines to distinguish characters in stories, use exaggerated signs to translate nursery rhymes, place themselves carefully at a public performance, and learn…

The perspectives of seven hearing parents on their use of sign communication with their deaf children were evaluated. All parents had chosen Signed English rather than American Sign Language (ASL). Parents' understanding of ASL varied greatly; they reported difficulty in developing personal and family fluency in Signed English; and they identified…