In everyday communication, not only do speakers describe, but they also depict. When depicting, speakers can take on the role of other people and quote their speech or imitate their actions. In previous work, we developed a paradigm to elicit depictions in speakers. Here we apply this paradigm to signers to explore depiction in the manual…

In this paper, we compare responses of deaf signers and hearing non-signers engaged in a categorization task of signs and non-linguistic human actions. We examine the time it takes to make such categorizations under conditions of 180 degrees stimulus inversion and as a function of repetition priming, in an effort to understand whether the…

Bilinguals who are fluent in American Sign Language (ASL) and English often produce "code-blends"--simultaneously articulating a sign and a word while conversing with other ASL-English bilinguals. To investigate the cognitive mechanisms underlying code-blend processing, we compared picture-naming times (Experiment 1) and semantic categorization…

The efficacy of video-based sign language (SL) navigation aids to improve Web search for Deaf Signers was tested by two experiments. Experiment 1 compared 2 navigation aids based on text hyperlinks linked to embedded SL videos, which differed in the spatial contiguity between the text hyperlink and SL video (contiguous vs. distant). Deaf Signers'…

Learning to read is a major obstacle for children who are deaf. The otherwise significant role of phonology is often limited as a result of hearing loss. However, semantic knowledge may facilitate reading comprehension. One important aspect of semantic knowledge concerns semantic categorization. In the present study, the quality of the semantic…

"Highly iconic" structures in Sign Language enable a narrator to act, switch characters, describe objects, or report actions in four-dimensions. This group of linguistic structures has no real spoken-language equivalent. Topographical descriptions are also achieved in a sign-language specific manner via the use of signing-space and…

The purpose of this study was to examine the behavioral and demographic characteristics of deaf males enrolled at state school for the Deaf. An analysis of student, family, and educational variables was conducted in order to provide a composite description of both the type and frequency of the offenses and of the offender. Participants were 90…

While all languages use shape to classify unfamiliar objects, some languages as diverse as Mandarin, Thai, Japanese, Mohawk, and American Sign Language lexicalize these and other types of description as noun classifiers. Classification does not develop from a fixed set of features in the object, but is discourse-sensitive and invoked when it would…