This study of eight severely mentally retarded nonverbal adults examined the form and function characteristics of intentional communication acts. Subjects who engaged in only contact gestures produced no protodeclarative type communication acts, whereas subjects who used distal as well as contact gestures produced some protodeclaratives.…

Examines the relation of Pidgin Sign English to American Sign Language and the written English of deaf persons. (AM)

People take their folk gestures seriously, which is illustrated in the fact that several folk gestures, such as raising the right hand and kissing the Bible, are used in religious and legal ceremonies. These and other gestures, such as making the sign of the cross and knocking on wood, are folk gestures used today which have their roots in early…

This paper discusses some expressive units of behavior which appear to have a widespread geographical distribution (in both morphology and significance); have a precocious ontogeny in infancy and childhood; and are used in appropriate social psychological settings even by congenitally blind, deaf-blind, and multiply handicapped youngsters.…

Examined the use of protoimperative and protodeclarative pointing gestures in three children with autism (ages 26 to 53 months) at 5-month intervals over two years. Imperative or instrumental functions emerged early in all three; declarative or experience sharing functions emerged later in two subjects and not at all in the third. (DB)

This study examined representational matching to sample with 68 subjects with severe mental retardation. Participants differed in their expressive communication and included symbolic (speaking) individuals, distal-gesture users, and contact-gesture users. Contact-gesture users performed significantly more poorly on identical matching to sample…

This paper describes a silent film made by the author which illustrates various French gestures. The format is Super 8, and the film lasts five minutes. The script is given, along with an English translation. The story concerns several French students at an outdoor cafe wondering about one of their friends. The conversation includes 10 typical…

This book was designed to meet five specific criteria which allow development of a course parallel to the treatment of the book's subject matter, active student involvement in testing and developing their own nonverbal communication capacities, delineation and analysis of the functional capacity of different nonverbal communication systems, an…

This paper summarizes most of what Sign linguists know about the function of the eyes in American Sign Language discourse. Here, "eyes" is taken to cover both opening and closing of the eyes and looking in a particular direction, referred to as the signer's "gaze-direction." Evidence is presented demonstrating that a signer's gaze can be lexically…

This paper explores the link between sign language research and sociolinguistic theory. It demonstrates how sign language research benefits from a sociolinguistic approach and provides validation for sociolinguistic theory. Previous research on the sign language of the deaf is reviewed, and a distinction is made between "structure-oriented" and…