Signing systems that attempted to represent spoken language via manual signs -- some invented, and some borrowed from natural sign languages -- have historically been used in classrooms with deaf children. However, despite decades of research and use of these systems in the classroom, there is little evidence supporting their educational…

Total communication procedures were used with three severely mentally retarded children (mental ages 2 to 4) to examine the effects of receptive speech on the acquisition and maintenance of manual signing. Signs corresponding to known words were generally acquired faster and retained better than signs corresponding to unknown words. (Author/JW)

The comprehension of 30 severely and profoundly deaf students (ages 10 to 17) was evaluated under 11 communication conditions involving individual and combined presentations of lipreading, listening, fingerspelling, and signed English. Severely deaf students scored higher than profoundly deaf students under all but one condition, and all students…