Deaf and hard-of-hearing (DHH) literature, including the reading behaviour of Deaf adults, suggests that Teachers of the deaf (TODs) read different amounts of text during read alouds to DHH prereaders based on the spoken and visual communication modes DHH prereaders use, such as: American Sign Language (ASL), only spoken English (speech),…

For d/Deaf and hard-of-hearing prereaders who communicate predominately in spoken and/or signed English (DHH-English), Teachers of the d/Deaf (TODs) read books aloud to increase English skills, auditory-verbal comprehension, sequencing skills, verbal reasoning, background knowledge, and sight word recognition. Teachers struggle to select…

In 1924 Jabbar Baghcheban created a manual system that employed the phonetic characteristics of spoken Persian and Perso-Arabic orthography for use in the education of deaf students (Ibrahimi 2007). This article is a first exploration of variation and change in this system as it has evolved into the Iranian manual alphabet. Data on the…

Linguists have long recognized the descriptive limitations of Stokoe notation, currently the most commonly used system for phonetic or phonological transcription, but continue using it because of its widespread influence (e.g., Siedlecki and Bonvillian, 2000). With the emergence of newer notation systems, the field will benefit from a discussion…

Research suggests that English-language proficiency is critical if students who are deaf or hard of hearing (D/HH) are to read as their hearing peers. One explanation for the traditionally reported reading achievement plateau when students are D/HH is the inability to hear insalient English morphology. Signing Exact English can provide visual…

This study, which is part of a larger longitudinal ethnographic study of young deaf children, reports on deaf children's use of fingerspelling. The children observed were early signers using Swedish Sign Language (SSL) in communication with teachers and peers. This study centres on the functions of fingerspelling in the children's everyday…

There is growing interest in learners' cognitive capacities to process a second language (L2) at first exposure to the target language. Evidence suggests that L2 learners are capable of processing novel words by exploiting phonological information from their first language (L1). Hearing adult learners of a sign language, however, cannot fall back…

Background: Children who are learning English as an Additional Language (EAL) may start school with smaller vocabularies than their monolingual peers. Given the links between vocabulary and academic achievement, it is important to evaluate interventions that are designed to support vocabulary learning in this group of children. Aims: To evaluate…

Defining what makes a person bilingual is notoriously difficult and dependent on various factors like fluency, age of acquisition, and situational context, among others. The notion of a "balanced bilingual" is even more elusive and fraught with limitations regarding the proper assessment and linguistic profiling of bilinguals, leading to…

Support for baby signing (BS) with hearing infants tends to converge toward three camps or positions. Those who advocate BS to advance infant language, literacy, behavioral, and cognitive development rely heavily on anecdotal evidence and social media to support their claims. Those who advocate BS as an introduction to another language, such as…

Mongolian Sign Language (MSL) is a visual-gestural language that developed from multiple languages interacting as a result of both geographic proximity and political relations and of the natural development of a communication system by deaf community members. Similar to the phonological systems of other signed languages, MSL combines handshapes,…

The purpose of this study was to determine the effect of manual sign mand training combined with prompt delay and vocal prompting on the production of vocal responses in nonvocal children with developmental disabilities. A multiple baseline design across participants verified the effectiveness of this intervention. All participants showed…

Introduction: Children with CHARGE syndrome often experience significantly delayed motor development, which affects their performance in many motor skills and physical activities. The purpose of this study was to determine the status of physical education provided to children with CHARGE syndrome. There were five main areas of focus: (1) physical…

Deafblind readers are heterogeneous in reading skill acquisition. This qualitative study uses in-depth interviews and protocol analyses and queries the three deafblind adult participants in describing their metacomprehension, metacognitive and metalinguistic strategies used when reading different types of text. Using retrospective analysis, the…

Background: Spoken and gestural communication proficiency varies greatly among autistic individuals. Three studies examined the role of oral- and manual-motor skill in predicting autistic children's speech development. Methods: Study 1 investigated whether infant and toddler oral- and manual-motor skills predict middle childhood and teenage speech…