Fingerspelling is an integral part of American Sign Language (ASL) and it is also an important aspect of becoming bilingual in English and ASL. Even though fingerspelling is based on English orthography, the development of fingerspelling does not parallel the development of reading in hearing children. Research reveals that deaf children may…

Finger spelling is a technique which helps children in first and second grade and remedial classes learn to spell short-vowel words, sound by sound, using their fingers as aids. (SW)

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)

Sign language with verbal behaviorally disordered children is an alternative mode of communication for helping to maintain behavioral control. Also, fingerspelling is used to teach letter-sound association, particularly with vowels. The use of signs in the classroom reduces unnecessary conversation and expands on simple cues and signals most…

Reports on a study of the acquisition of fingerspelling, a manual system for representing the alphabet, by young deaf children whose first language is American Sign Language. Describes the system of fingerspelling and its use in the American deaf community and discusses the interaction of fingerspelling and signed language. (SED)

Twenty-five second generation deaf signers (6-16 years old) participated in three experiments measuring their ability to classify fingerspelled and signed words and attend to the individual handshapes within fingerspelled words. Results revealed that Ss could discriminate fingerspelled words and decompose fingerspelling into the handshapes that…

Suggestions are made for incorporating finger-spelling with sound blending in spelling instruction for handicapped and nonhandicapped children. Teaching materials are described, and five steps in teaching how to spell a three letter word are listed. (CL)

The results indicated that bimodal presentations are significantly more effective than unimodal approaches and that finger spelling can be an important aid to learning for the Ss used in this study. (Author)

To test three hypotheses concerning fingerspelling's contribution to word recognition, 24 deaf children in three age groups (7-9, 10-12, and 13-15 years) were administered a vocabulary recognition test and a lexical decision task. Subjects' performance was measured by the number of words accurately identified and the response latency. Results did…

The finger spelling intelligibility of 10 spellers (five deaf and five normal) to 34 readers (eight deaf and 26 normal) was measured along with differences relative to experience and condition of hearing. (Author)

With the use of a probe-type serial memory task, hearing and deaf children matched on chronological age, IQ, and sex were randomly assigned to named, unnamed, or dactylo-kinesthetic (finger spelled) stimulus pretraining conditions and compared on subsequent recall performance. (Author/MP)

The problems and satisfactions of teaching deaf children are discussed in this interview with a teacher of the deaf. Uses of Ameslon and signed English, talking, and valuable teaching approaches are offered. (JD)