The primary purpose of this study was to evaluate the generalization of mands during functional communication training (FCT) and sign language training across functional contexts (i.e., positive reinforcement, negative reinforcement). A secondary purpose was to evaluate a training procedure based on stimulus control to teach manual signs. During…

Parents have a lot to consider in a very short period of time following identification of a hearing loss. Loving their child is simply not sufficient. Questions must be asked and answered by parents. How will they communicate with their child and how will their child communicate with them? How will their child form friendships? How will their…

This study explored deaf and hearing university students' metacognitive awareness with regard to comprehension difficulties during reading and classroom instruction. Utilising the Reading Awareness Inventory (Milholic, V. 1994. "An inventory to pique students' metacognitive awareness of reading strategies." "Journal of Reading"…

This article discusses the role of eye gaze in creative sign language. Because eye gaze conveys various types of linguistic and poetic information, it is an intrinsic part of sign language linguistics in general and of creative signing in particular. We discuss various functions of eye gaze in poetic signing and propose a classification of gaze…

This study investigated the effects of hearing status and age of signed language acquisition on signed language working memory capacity. Professional Auslan (Australian sign language)/English interpreters (hearing native signers and hearing nonnative signers) and deaf Auslan signers (deaf native signers and deaf nonnative signers) completed an…

Literacy is the ability to read and write. Being able to read and write is an important skill in modern society. Deaf and hard of hearing (D/HH) students' literacy achievement has been reported as lower than that of hearing students. This research focuses on the literacy skills of D/HH students, aiming to determine their reading/writing skills and…

This study was designed to evaluate the potential of simultaneous communication (sign and speech together) to support classroom learning by college students who use cochlear implants (CIs). Metacognitive awareness of learning also was evaluated. A within-subjects design involving 40 implant users indicated that the student participants learned…

Over the years attempts have been made to standardize sign languages. This form of language planning has been tackled by a variety of agents, most notably teachers of Deaf students, social workers, government agencies, and occasionally groups of Deaf people themselves. Their efforts have most often involved the development of sign language books…

The past three decades of activism for linguistic human rights (Skutnabb-Kangas 2000) have witnessed examples of language planning by various national and supranational actors in national and international spaces, with an exchange of ideas and strategies employed by national, regional, and worldwide organizations. In many countries a key goal of…

The paper describes an e-learning system called Advanced Learning Space that was developed at the Technical University of Liberec. The system provides a personalized virtual work space and promotes communication among students and their teachers. The core of the system is a module that can be used to automatically record, store and playback…

Author and husband, Roger Williams, is hearing and signs fluently, and author and wife, Sherry Williams, is deaf and uses both speech and signs, although she is most comfortable signing. As parents of six children--deaf and hearing--they are determined to encourage their children to do their best, and they always set their expectations high. They…

A commentary on Williams's (2012) invited article on the use of adapted vocabulary learning interventions focuses on three areas: (a) Vocabulary interventions with storybook reading originally designed for hearing children can be adapted for deaf children. (b) Teachers are invited to reflect on how the read-aloud process in English differs from…

Students who are deaf and use sign language frequently have language delays that affect their literacy skills. Students who use American Sign Language (ASL) often lack fluent language models in both the home and school settings, delaying both the development of a first language and the development of literacy in printed English. Mediated and…

In Scandinavia and some other countries, a bilingual-bicultural approach to deaf education was celebrated in national programs from the mid-1980s until the broad popularity of cochlear implantation in middle 2000s created a shift back to an emphasis on spoken language for many deaf children. At the same time, only a few studies evaluated the…

Several scholars have asked what are the relations between two recently developed concepts, Deaf ethnicity and Deafhood. The emergence of these concepts, along with others such as "audism" (Humphries 1977), "dysconscious audism," "Sign Language Peoples," and "Deaf Gain" reflects important attempts by Deaf…