Easy access to the internet allows adolescents to share humor, such as memes, via social media. This quasi-experimental study investigated whether there was a difference in the number of memes comprehended on an assessment test among adolescents who were typically developing, adolescents who were deaf or hard of hearing, and adolescents with…

Previous research has hypothesized that human sequential processing may be dependent upon hearing experience (the "auditory scaffolding hypothesis"), predicting that sequential rule learning abilities should be hindered by congenital deafness. To test this hypothesis, we compared deaf signer and hearing individuals' ability to acquire…

The aims of this study were to examine vocabulary scores of 5-year-old children who are deaf or hard of hearing (DHH), as well as the impact of early enrollment in specialized intervention on vocabulary outcomes. Receptive and expressive vocabulary scores were analyzed for 342 five-year-old children who are DHH enrolled in specialized listening…

In order to challenge the dominant and deficit perspectives in deaf education, this study utilized a Critical Race Theory framework to examine Latine families with Deaf children as they are portrayed in literature across areas of policy, research, and practice. Through qualitative semi-structured interviews, this research project invited nine…

Most deaf children have hearing parents who do not know a sign language at birth and are at risk of limited language input during early childhood. Studying these children as they learn a sign language has revealed that timing of first-language exposure critically shapes language outcomes. But the input deaf children receive in their first language…

When a deaf or hard-of-hearing child enters a classroom with an interpreter, the goal, and sometimes the assumption, is that they will be granted full access to the classroom experience. This study focuses on the clarity and completeness with which critical elements of classroom discourse are conveyed through the interpretations of 40 educational…

Satisfaction with one's academic major is critical to a university student's development. This study explores the interrelationships among thinking styles, grit, and academic major satisfaction in both deaf or hard-of-hearing (DHH) and hearing students, employing independent samples t-tests to compare the two groups, Pearson's correlation analysis…

The majority of deaf and hard of hearing children around the world are born to hearing parents, most of whom are not familiar with deafness or sign language. This can lead to language deprivation or delay and a lack of social interaction for these children. Below, article co-author Jacqueline Wunderlich shares her own story of growing up deaf, its…

The hypothesis that impoverished language experience affects complex sentence structure development around the end of early childhood was tested using a fully randomized, sentence-to-picture matching study in American Sign Language (ASL). The participants were ASL signers who had impoverished or typical access to language in early childhood. Deaf…

The process by which user experiences (UX) for children are created is uncertain, especially for deaf and hard of hearing (DHH) children. This paper seeks to (I) describe the origins of UX and child-computer interaction and to describe what is being taught to designers today; (II) use the example of digital assessment to extract insights from…

Purpose: Processing real-world sounds requires acoustic and higher-order semantic information. We tested the theory that individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) show enhanced processing of acoustic features and impaired processing of semantic information. Methods: We used a change deafness task that required detection of speech and…

Language, literacy, and social-emotional skills are important for successful participation in society. These skills develop through interaction with others and through explicit instruction. An important activity to contribute to the development of these skills in young children is shared storybook reading. For deaf and hard-of-hearing (DHH)…

In Sri Lanka, about 300,000 Sinhala speaking people are either deaf or hard of hearing (DHH) and would benefit from a common Sinhala sign language, technological resources such as captioning, and educational and social support. There is no fully developed common sign language for members of the Sinhalese community, a severe shortage of sign…

Classrooms are complex learning environments, with instruction, climate, and teacher--student interactions playing important roles in students' academic progress. To investigate the learning environments of deaf and hard-of-hearing (DHH) students, we developed a new observational tool called the Quality of the Learning Environment-DHH rating scale…

Research has demonstrated that deaf children of deaf signing parents (DOD) are afforded developmental advantages. This can be misconstrued as indicating that no DOD children exhibit early language delays (ELDs) because of their early access to a visual language. Little research has studied this presumption. In this study, we examine 174 ratings of…