The role of fingerspelling as to its unique features, its use, and its function in the culture and education of the Saudi Deaf population has not been examined. Specifically, this study focuses on assessing historical and existing attitudes and beliefs of Saudi Deaf people regarding the importance of fingerspelling and situations in which they use…

D/deaf children of Deaf parents reportedly begin learning finger-spelling as young as thirteen months old, but deaf children born to hearing, nonsigning parents lack natural access to the native (spoken) language of their families, often exhibiting later language development. Forty-four deaf adults participated in a fingerspelling test of…

Students acquiring American Sign Language (ASL) as a second language (L2) struggle with fingerspelling comprehension more than skilled signers. These L2 learners might be attempting to perceive and comprehend fingerspelling in a way that is different from native signers, which could negatively impact their ability to comprehend fingerspelling.…

Two lexical decision experiments are reported that investigate whether the same segmentation strategies are used for reading printed English words and fingerspelled words (in American Sign Language). Experiment 1 revealed that both deaf and hearing readers performed better when written words were segmented with respect to an orthographically…

A three-month project in which a blind hearing adult learned manual communication techniques for the deaf is reported. The instructional methods and reactions of teacher and student are presented. Finger spelling proved more useful than American Sign Language for the blind person as it enabled the blind user to follow English syntax. (PMJ)

The accuracy of deaf adults' letter report was greater for real and nonsense words than for pseudowords, and error analysis shows deaf adults tend to produce orthographically regular responses. These findings indicate clearly the use of orthographic structure in word recognition. (MSE)

Presents study designed to determine whether interruption in the use of the manual encoding modality would retard learning in prelingually deaf subjects. One group of students used finger spelling and finger numeration in learning eight pairs of number-word combinations while the other group used no manual encoding. Results show groups using…

A study of 10 typical women investigated the effect of fingerspelling task length on temporal characteristics and perceived naturalness of speech produced during simultaneous communication. Speech produced during simultaneous communication was rated as less natural and demonstrated increased interword interval, diphthong, work, and sentence…

Predictions about the length of time needed to fingerspell various strings in four sentences were drawn from cipher, phonological, and syntacitc models of fingerspelling production. (Author)

Discusses a series of seminars designed to teach situational communication skills to deaf adults and enable graduate students to improve their ability to work with the deaf. (RW)

An investigation of the confusion resulting from reliance on visual perceptual teachers in the identification of dactylemes (handshapes) in the American Manual Alphabet (MA) is reported. A hierarchy of errors varying with subjects' degree of expertness in the MA is established. This can help manual communication teachers develop techniques for…

Discusses background information about the deaf that may be useful to reading teachers working with older deaf students; suggests additional sources of information on sign language and reading instruction for the deaf. (MKM)

A PROGRAMED FILM COURSE WAS DEVELOPED TO TEACH PERSONS HOW TO READ THE MANUAL ALPHABET. THE EFFECTS OF THE FOLLOWING PROGRAMING CONDITIONS WERE STUDIED--MANNER OF STIMULUS REPETITION, RATE OF STIMULUS PRESENTATION, AND MODE OF RESPONSE. THE PROJECT WAS DONE IN TWO PHASES. IN THE FIRST PHASE, SUBJECTS WERE 42 DEAF GALLAUDET COLLEGE PREPARATORY…