Co-speech gesture in monolinguals has been linked to several cognitive processes: prompting memory stores, conveying spatial concepts, searching for lexical equivalents, and supporting rhythm and cohesion. The production of co-speech gesture also occurs in spoken language bilinguals. Studies have demonstrated that bilinguals fluent in American…

The aim of this research was to analyze the use of iconicity during language acquisition of Israeli Sign language and spoken Hebrew. Two bilingual-bimodal infants were observed in a longitudinal study between the ages of 10-26 months. I analyzed infants' production of iconic words, signs, and gestures. The results showed that infants' use of vocal…

In the present study we aimed to investigate phonological substitution errors made by hearing second language (M2L2) learners of American Sign Language (ASL) during a sentence translation task. Learners saw sentences in ASL that were signed by either a native signer or a M2L2 learner. Learners were to simply translate the sentence from ASL to…

This dissertation describes the features of co-speech gestures of English/ASL bilinguals and addresses three main questions: 1) How do English/ASL bilinguals gesture differently than non-signers? 2) How do native ASL/English bilinguals gesture differently than non-native English/ASL bilinguals? 3) Do English/ASL bilinguals gesture differently to…

This qualitative, longitudinal, single-case study analyzes naturalistic interactions in Swedish Sign Language. Multiple interactions took place mainly between a mother and a deaf twin on twelve occasions. The participants' actions and language structure are examined as the child progressed from ten to forty months of age. The results are presented…

In recent years, the intersection of cognitive psychology, developmental psychology, and neuroscience with regard to deaf individuals has received increasing attention from a variety of academic and educational audiences. Both research and pedagogy have addressed questions about whether deaf children learn in the same ways that hearing children…

The aim of this longitudinal case study was to describe bimodal and bilingual acquisition in a hearing child, Hugo, especially the role his Deaf family played in his linguistic education. Video observations of the family interactions were conducted from the time Hugo was 10 months of age until he was 40 months old. The family language was Swedish…

Given that the linguistic articulators for sign language are also used to produce co-speech gesture, we examined whether one year of academic instruction in American Sign Language (ASL) impacts the rate and nature of gestures produced when speaking English. A survey study revealed that 75% of ASL learners (N = 95), but only 14% of Romance language…

Bimodal bilinguals are hearing individuals who know both a signed and a spoken language. Effects of bimodal bilingualism on behavior and brain organization are reviewed, and an fMRI investigation of the recognition of facial expressions by ASL-English bilinguals is reported. The fMRI results reveal separate effects of sign language and spoken…

Examined potential effects of early exposure to sign language on the use of communicative gestures by a bilingual hearing child of deaf parents. Data were analyzed to identify types and tokens of communicative gestures, words, signs, and the ways in which they were combined. (Author/VWL)

To assess competency in American Sign Language (ASL) and manually coded English (MCE), 219 National Technical Institute for the Deaf students, judged to be skilled signers, viewed videotaped stories, one in ASL and one in MCE, followed by true/false questions in the same language as the story. (Author/PHR)