This is a dissertation study focusing on the ability of deaf children to fast map common and newly learned novel fingerspelled words through a training task. It also explored the relationship between the ability to learn fingerspelled words and the children's reading and vocabulary skills. Learning was assessed using five domains: imitation, matching, production, lexical identification, and writing. Participants included 55 deaf children in two age groups: 5/6-year olds and 8/9 year olds, from both hearing and deaf families. Results showed that older children learned significantly more fingerspelled words than the younger children. Deaf children from deaf families learned more words than deaf children of hearing families regardless of age. Analyses of the errors the children made also showed significant differences for age and parent hearing status. There was a strong relationship between the ability to learn new words through fingerspelling and the child's reading and vocabulary skills, and moderate relationships with the child's length of enrollment in an ASL program and the child's age when the parents began learning sign language, the parent's estimate of how well the child learned new fingerspelled words, fingerspelling learning at home, and how many deaf teachers the child had had. A regression analysis showed a strong relationship between learning fingerspelled words and reading skills and length of enrollment at school(s) that use ASL. The study emphasized the role of fingerspelling as an important aspect of literacy and bilingual language development. [The dissertation citations contained here are published with the permission of ProQuest LLC. Further reproduction is prohibited without permission. Copies of dissertations may be obtained by Telephone (800) 1-800-521-0600. Web page: http://bibliotheek.ehb.be:2222/en-US/products/dissertations/individuals.shtml.]