Language knowledge, age of acquisition (AoA), and stimulus intelligibility all affect gaze behavior for reading print, but it is unknown how these factors affect "sign-watching" among signers. This study investigated how these factors affect gaze behavior during sign language comprehension in 52 adult signers who acquired American Sign…

Whether to use spoken English for the instruction of American Sign Language (ASL) is a pedagogical debate for those teaching hearing second language learners. Previous investigations have found the use of learners' first language to be beneficial for vocabulary acquisition. Studies on sign languages, however, have found that a class taught…

Skilled hearing readers activate phonological, orthographic, and semantic representations in order to recognize and comprehend words. However, deaf readers may achieve reading comprehension by different means. More specifically, enhanced visual attention, reduced access to phonology, and bimodal bilingualism may influence how deaf readers…

Teachers of the d/Deaf (TODs) struggle to select appropriate storybooks for elementary-aged Deaf pre-readers who use American Sign Language (Hayes & Shaw, 1994). Hayes and Shaw (1994) created a book selection system for TODs, but their methodology was difficult to evaluate. The purpose of the present research was to create an empirically…

Navigating a phonocentric and audistic society can be challenging for Deaf people, yet some of them adapt and exhibit resilience. Although there is a plethora of resilience studies, Deaf people's narratives are largely unexplored. This phenomenological study explored from a Deaf cultural-linguistic lens 10 Deaf professionals who use American Sign…

Few American Sign Language (ASL) assessments are readily available for educators to administer and score to document deaf students' skill levels and direct ASL instruction. Even fewer studies include deaf students with intellectual disabilities or document deaf students' ASL skills across time. The present study reports deaf school-aged students'…

A significant gap has been identified in research-based findings and classroom instructional practices of hearing ASL teachers in high schools in the U.S. (Rosen, 2015). Research has shown the absence of standardized ASL instructional guidelines, rules, and procedures has created a significant gap in teaching and learning practices at the high…

In Utah, deaf and hard of hearing elementary school students can access their education--in American Sign Language (ASL) and spoken and written English--from their devices at home. Many secondary students can access online coursework as well. This is thanks to a four-year project undertaken by the Utah School for the Deaf (USD). The goal was to…

Parent input during interaction with young children varies across languages and contexts with regard to the relative number of words from different lexical categories, particularly nouns and verbs. Previous work has focused on spoken language input. Little is known about the lexical composition of parent input in American Sign Language (ASL). We…

Most standardized reading assessments used with deaf and hard-of-hearing (d/Dhh) students do not accommodate their frequent lack of spoken language fluency. Such tests are rarely normed on d/Dhh individuals and do not adjust for potentially biased test items. Yet, accurate and valid measures of reading skills are essential for making appropriate…

Limited studies exist that connect using signed language with mathematics performance of deaf and hard of hearing children. In the present study, the authors examined 257 participants and compared their results on the Northwest Evaluation Association: Measures of Academic Progress (NWEA MAP) to their results on an assessment of American Sign…

Deaf students are under-enrolled in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) majors, making it important to explore how and why deaf and hard of hearing (DHH) students connect (or fail to connect) with STEM. Engaging students in informal STEM with attention to how such experiences interact with their identities has the potential…

Deaf and hard of hearing (DHH) students' performance on fraction story problems is a cause for concern given that knowledge of fractions in the elementary grades is essential for learning Algebra in secondary school and advanced mathematics in college. Using grounded theory, the current study investigated DHH college students' cognitive strategies…

Recent research has shown that a distinct variety of American Sign Language, known as Black ASL, developed in the segregated schools for deaf African Americans in the US South during the pre-civil rights era. Research has also shown that in some respects Black ASL is closer than most white varieties to the standard taught in ASL classes and found…

Universal Design for Learning (UDL) provides a flexible framework for supporting a wide variety of learners. We report here on a conference that presented the UDL framework as a way to increase success of deaf and hard-of-hearing (deaf/hh) students in introductory biology courses. The Opening the Pathway conference was an NSF Advanced…