Past research has shown that many scientists, when asked to interpret unfamiliar graphs that have nevertheless been culled from introductory undergraduate courses in their own field, experience problems and cannot give the standard answer accepted in the field. Yet, these same scientists turn out to be highly competent when it comes to graphs from…

This article traces the sources of the estimates of the number of American Sign Language users in the United States. A variety of claims can be found in the literature and on the Internet, some of which have been shown to be unfounded but continue to be cited. In our search for the sources of the various (mis)understandings, we have found that all…

Sign languages modulate the production of signs in space and use this spatial modulation to refer back to entities--to maintain coreference. We ask here whether spatial modulation is so fundamental to language in the manual modality that it will be invented by individuals asked to create gestures on the spot. English speakers were asked to…

This follow-up study identifies the relationship between pairings of parental hearing status and the regularity of signing with the deaf or hard of hearing student at home and in the classroom. Additionally, given that the incidence of intergenerational deafness has a major genetic component, parental hearing status in relation to the child's…

Background: Previous studies in the literature report that deaf individuals who experience late access to language perform poorly on false belief tests of Theory of Mind (ToM) compared with age-matched deaf and hearing controls exposed to language early. Methods: A group of 22 deaf Nicaraguans (aged 7 to 39 years) who learned Nicaraguan Sign…

In the few studies that have been conducted, researchers have typically found that deaf adolescents have more mental health difficulties than their hearing peers and that, within the deaf groups, those who use spoken language have better mental health functioning than those who use sign language. This study investigated the hypotheses that mental…

It is approaching a half century since Bill Stokoe published his revolutionary monograph, "Sign Language Structure: An Outline of the Visual Communication Systems of the American Deaf." It is rare for a work of innovative scholarship to spark a social as well as an intellectual revolution, but that is just what Stokoe's 1960 paper did. And it is…

Alexander Graham Bell is often portrayed as either hero or villain of deaf individuals and the Deaf community. His writings, however, indicate that he was neither, and was not as clearly definite in his beliefs about language as is often supposed. The following two articles, reprinted from The Educator (1898), Vol. V, pp. 3?4 and pp. 38?44,…

Every so often there are stories that take the world by storm and make such an impact that they become part of our everyday world. These stories, characters, and themes become established elements of cultural literacy. This is exactly what has happened with J. K. Rowling's Harry Potter series. Harry and his cohort of wizards, witches, and their…

In recent years, research has progressed steadily in regard to the use of computers to recognize and render sign language. This paper reviews significant projects in the field beginning with finger-spelling hands such as "Ralph" (robotics), CyberGloves (virtual reality sensors to capture isolated and continuous signs), camera-based…

Paintings emerge from a culture field and must be interpreted in relation to the net of culture. A given culture will be implicated by the sign system used by the painter. Everyone agrees that in Chinese landscape paintings, the most important cultural bond is to ancient Chinese Taoism, and to a lesser degree, to Confucianism. Obviously, then, the…

This study focuses on the mapping of events onto verb-argument structures in British Sign Language (BSL). The development of complex sentences in BSL is described in a group of 30 children, aged 3;2-12;0, using data from comprehension measures and elicited sentence production. The findings support two interpretations: firstly, in the mapping of…

In this article the linguistic features of three Italian Sign Language (Lingua Italiana dei Segni, or LIS) registers are analyzed focusing on iconic phenomena. Previous treatments of iconicity and motivation in spoken and signed language are discussed. Iconicity is defined as a regular mapping between expressive form and meaning that can be active…

Roy J. Stewart made two very significant contributions to Deaf America. He was a key member of a Gallaudet alumni committee (along with Harley D. Drake, class of 1904, and Frederick H. Hughes, class of 1913) that raised seed money for the construction of the Edward Miner Gallaudet Memorial Library, which was influential in Gallaudet's attaining…

Learning is better than knowing, generalization is more illuminating than abstract generality or universality because we perceive and thus become conscious of change or development only. Signs and representations establish the dialectic of fixation on the one hand and transformation on the other, which is so essential to learning and cognition.…