Analysis of the responses of 36 deaf professionals involved in deaf education regarding the use and effectiveness of simultaneous communication indicated that the effective combination of aspects of American Sign Language and English, when used by an experienced communicator and grounded in effective signing, can be very effective for…

Comparison of the effectiveness of presenting information to deaf college students by signing only, interpreter signing and teacher speaking, and teacher signing and speaking failed to show that any one method was superior to the others. (CB)

During an eight-month treatment regimen utilizing simultaneous sign/speech input, all of the words of a young girl with Down's Syndrome were recorded. Analyses revealed that most of the words she initially signed were later spontaneously spoken and that most of her signed productions evolved into spontaneous spoken productions. (Author/JDD)

Two five-year-old children with profound hearing impairments were involved in a conditional discrimination task. They were taught to relate manual signs, pictures, and printed words in a nominal matching-to-sample task in such a way that equivalent stimuli resulted. Results showed that the establishment of equivalence relations can promote…

A teacher of hearing-impaired students describes commercially available software for teaching sign language and finger spelling, lists sources of information about other software programs, and offers suggestions to encourage teachers to utilize computers in their classrooms. (JDD)

Deaf parent/hearing child pairs (n=19) completed the Parental Strengths and Needs Inventory and were interviewed about their relationships. Scores were above average, and parents expressed high interest in childrearing information. Children with strong sign language skills expressed general willingness to interpret for their parents, and reported…

A nationwide study examined relationships between 201 prelingually deaf adolescents' reading comprehension scores and their hearing mothers' communication strategies and skills. A potential relationship was found between reading scores and signing skill levels of mothers, but no significant relationship between mothers' communication methods and…

Classes of 9th-grade and 11th-grade students with deafness read contemporary poetry and created their own poems through writing, sign language, and mime. The poetry of the profoundly deaf students followed the syntax of sign language, while students with residual hearing focused on the elements of form, especially rhyming. (JDD)

The mother of a young head injured nonverbal child describes ways used to increase the child's communicative ability including gestures, sign language, and communication boards. (DB)

Major works on the history, structure, and teaching of American Sign Language (ASL) in the last quarter-century are reviewed, and studies of the culture of the deaf are outlined. Research on the linguistic nature of ASL is highlighted, and some attention is given to British Sign Language. (Author/MSE)

Outlines phonological structure and processes of American Sign Language (ASL), covering: (1) sequential phenomena found in the production of individual signs; (2) the segmental phonetic transcription system; (3) paradigmatic and syntagmatic contrasts in ASL signs; (4) similarities between ASL and spoken language phonological processes; and (5)…

Hearing-impaired high school students created a simulated world where sign language was the dominant mode of communication, and role-played such careers as doctors, bankers, and police officers. Hearing students were invited to visit this simulated world and found how inaccessible various facilities and services were to people without sign…

Argues that, although South African Sign Language (SASL) contains a high degree of lexical diversity, there exists an underlying common syntactic and morphological base on which all the different varieties are grounded. This common base provides a foundation on which future educational and language policy may be developed. (17 references)…

Experienced deaf-blind users (N=10) of sign language tested their ability to receive signed messages including isolated signs and sentences. A set of 122 isolated signs was received with an average accuracy of 87%. Signed sentence reception accuracy ranged from 60-85%, with errors accounted for primarily by deletions and phonological or…

Examined the use of bimodal communication (BC), sign language with spoken English, by hearing college students in five scenarios and during informal discussions between scenarios. The results indicated that varying signing ability affected signers' BC rate and that skilled signers adapted the amount of BC they used to the social situation. (three…