"Forbidden Signs" explores the debate between manualists and oralists in deaf education into political, pedagogical, scientific, philosophical, historical, racial, sexual, economic, and linguistic contexts. The biggest weakness of the book is that it is a history only of the attitudes of hearing people toward oralism and manualism. (SLD)

The report presents the results of an Office of Demographic Studies study of the communication patterns of a national sample of 657 hearing impaired children. The extent to which various modes of communication (such as manual or oral) are used with hearing impaired children is examined, and the relationships between communication patterns and a…

This study investigated the ability of two groups of profoundly deaf students (N=40 and ages 8, 11, 14, and 17), using either oral or signed communication, to employ pragmatic skills required for effective face-to-face interactions. Notable differences in pragmatic skills were found between the groups and between deaf and normal hearing students.…

The nineteenth-century debate over use of the manual versus the oral approach to deaf education is discussed and related to the prevailing social and educational thought. Both approaches are seen as oppressive and antideaf. Current efforts to reconceptualize deafness have produced calls for bilingual-bicultural programs. (IAH)

The study measured hearing-impaired (N=106) students' reception of language presented via five modes: oral, aural, manual, oral-aural;, and simultaneous manual and oral. The simultaneous manual and oral and the manual modes received the highest ratings. Results are discussed in terms of theories of cognitive processing and selective attention.…

The comprehension of 30 severely and profoundly deaf students (ages 10 to 17) was evaluated under 11 communication conditions involving individual and combined presentations of lipreading, listening, fingerspelling, and signed English. Severely deaf students scored higher than profoundly deaf students under all but one condition, and all students…

Seventy-two deaf Ss (10- to 19-years-old) were tested, employing the Test of Syntactic Ability (TSA), the language sub-tests of the Stanford Achievement Test (SAT), and analyses of written language samples, in a study of the influence of early language and communication environment on their later syntactic language ability. Ss were divided into…

This paper examines the evolution of sign language's role in education, beginning with the debate over sign language versus oral communication, followed by the debate over American Sign Language (ASL) versus other sign systems. The paper points out that this debate process is hindering the educational experience for thousands of deaf children and…