Background: Children with Down syndrome have speech and language difficulties that are disproportionate to their overall intellectual ability and relative strengths in the use of gesture. Shared book reading between parents and their children provides an effective context in which language development can be facilitated. However, children with…

Establishing evidence- and research-based practices relies upon research synthesis of individual studies in reviews and meta analyses. Further summarizing scientific evidence about a specific topic by synthesizing reviews is an area of need to determine practices that have a strong evidence base and to identify areas of methodological weakness and…

This paper is the third in a series concerned with the level of access provided to deaf and hard of hearing children who rely on interpreters to access classroom communication. The first two papers focused on the accuracy and intelligibility of educational interpreters who use Cued Speech (CS); this study examines the accuracy of those who use…

This study examined the effect of a 1-day, 6-hour key word signing (KWS) workshop on in-service special education teachers' and speech-language pathologists' (SLPs) (a) skill identifying American Sign Language (ASL) signs; (b) skill producing ASL signs; (c) use of KWS in the classroom or therapy room; and (d) perceived changes from taking part in…

Signing systems that attempted to represent spoken language via manual signs -- some invented, and some borrowed from natural sign languages -- have historically been used in classrooms with deaf children. However, despite decades of research and use of these systems in the classroom, there is little evidence supporting their educational…

This article explores the available research literature on language development and language interventions among deaf and hard of hearing (d/hh) children. This literature is divided into two broad categories: Research on natural languages (specifically American Sign Language and spoken English) and research on communication systems (specifically…

The purpose of this study was to determine the effect of manual sign mand training combined with prompt delay and vocal prompting on the production of vocal responses in nonvocal children with developmental disabilities. A multiple baseline design across participants verified the effectiveness of this intervention. All participants showed…

Introduction: Children with CHARGE syndrome often experience significantly delayed motor development, which affects their performance in many motor skills and physical activities. The purpose of this study was to determine the status of physical education provided to children with CHARGE syndrome. There were five main areas of focus: (1) physical…

This document presents the Assessment of Deafblind Access to Manual Language Systems (ADAMLS), a resource for educational teams who are responsible for developing appropriate adaptations and strategies for children who are deafblind who are candidates for learning manual language systems. The assessment tool should be used for all children with a…

The basic impoverishment of deafness is not lack of hearing but lack of language. To illustrate this, we have only to compare a 4-year-old hearing child, with a working vocabulary of between 2,000 and 3,000 words, to a child of the same age, profoundly deaf since infancy, who may have only a few words at his command. Even more important than…

Describes a study in which two nonspeech communication systems were evaluated with respect to their efficacy for use with profoundly retarded nonspeech children. Results show that 53 profoundly retarded children who have failed to acquire expressive linguistic skills can succeed with some alternative nonspeech symbol systems, especially with…

Examines and rejects the theory that the deaf have access to a "phonological" code. Recommends that if deaf children are to be introduced to a manual system of communication, it should be the syntactically adequate Paget-Gorman system. (Author/FL)

Factorial invariance of the Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children-Third Edition (WISC-III) when administered to deaf children who use sign language was studied with 110 children and the WISC-III standardization sample of 2,200 children. Path coefficients, error variances, and factor covariances were not invariant, indicating that test…

A multimodal intervention program designed for a nine-year-old with severe communication problems (secondary to cerebral palsy, receptive dysphasia, and auditory agnosia) combined manual signs and graphic symbols to help her communicate. The intensive, highly structured program had significant positive results. (Author/CB)

The English language development of an unselected group of 20 hearing impaired children (mean age approximately four) taught Signed English was studied over a four-year period. (Author/PHR)