Research has demonstrated that deaf children of deaf signing parents (DOD) are afforded developmental advantages. This can be misconstrued as indicating that no DOD children exhibit early language delays (ELDs) because of their early access to a visual language. Little research has studied this presumption. In this study, we examine 174 ratings of…

Deaf children of hearing parents (DOH) are at risk for early language delays (ELD) due to environmental and etiological factors, compounding the previously reported higher incidence of ELD in deaf children of deaf parents (DOD) compared to the general population. Archival data from the online database of the Visual Communication and Sign Language…

This paper describes the first three stages of a 4-year study whose purpose is to examine the relationship between American Sign Language (ASL) and English literacy among 160 residential school children (ages 8-15) who are deaf. In the first stage, test instruments were developed, data collection procedures refined, sampling procedures planned,…

This article discusses the development of the MacArthur Communicative Development Inventory for American Sign Language (ASL-CDI), a parent report that measures early sign production. Normative data from 69 children (8-36 months) with deafness and their parents with deafness found the development of the ASL-CDI has been successful. (Contains…