The present paper summarizes three experiments that investigate the effects of age of acquisition on first-language (L1) acquisition in relation to second-language (L2) outcome. The experiments use the unique acquisition situations of childhood deafness and sign language. The key factors controlled across the studies are age of L1 acquisition, the…

Testing of deaf readers' comprehension of relative clause structures in written English, signed English, and American Sign Language suggests that a specific syntactic disability does not differentiate good from poor deaf readers, but rather a processing deficit may underlie poor readers' comprehension difficulties. (Author/CB)

A total of 1,018 signs in one deaf child's naturalistic interaction with her deaf mother, between the ages of 19 and 24 months were analyzed. This study summarizes regular modification processes in the phonology of the child sign's handshape, location, movement, and prosody. First, changes to signs were explained by the notion of phonological…

Presents study which explored metalinguistic abilities of prelingually deaf children who are users of Signed English with regard to their explicit segmentation of Signed English sentences into words. Subjects exhibited varying abilities that increased with age and were similar to developmental patterns in hearing populations. (Author/BK)

Examines whether manually coded English (MCE) sign language systems are learnable. Reading achievement and expressive English skills of deaf students educated using only a MCE sign system were examined. Deaf students had expressive English skills comparable to hearing students in respect to syntactical and lexical skills but were deficient in…

Describes research into the correspondence between speech and sign language by looking at simultaneous communication as it is used by fluent deaf persons. The study aims to determine what relationship, if any, exists between the morpheme level and the message level of utterances in discourse. (SED)

Evaluates the contribution of visuo-gestural modality versus linguistic factors in determining the order of elements in sign language. The results of a study show that Italian Sign Language differs along significant lines from both spoken Italian and pantomime. (22 references) (GLR)

Because the relationship of gesticulation to sign language has not received much research attention, this study considers gesture and sign among users of signed and oral languages. Results suggest that gestures produced by deaf individuals can be distinguished from the sign language in which they are embedded, including their semantic and…

Examines the differential mode usage (speech, vocalize, gesture and sign) of profoundly deaf preschoolers and their hearing mothers as a function of their level of communicative competence and method of communication. Relates simultaneous use of modes to higher communicative competence and specific pragmatic types of communication. (Author/MES)

The relationship between sign language rehearsal and written free recall was examined by having deaf college students rehearse the sign language equivalents of printed English words. Studies of both immediate and delayed memory suggested that word recall increased as a function of total rehearsal frequency and frequency of appearance in rehearsal…