Teachers' perceptions of promoting sign language phonological awareness in an ASL/English bilingual program

Signed Rhyme and Rhythm With Deaf Children: Early Childhood Teacher Interviews

Early childhood programs promote language play opportunities due to the well-documented positive influences on cognition, language, and literacy development. This qualitative investigation explores language play through the form of signed rhyme and rhythm among young deaf children. Teachers specializing in deaf education within an early childhood program were interviewed to assess their knowledge and implementation of signed rhyme and rhythm in their pedagogical practices. The results reveal that despite recognizing numerous advantages and deeming signed rhyme and rhythm as essential for deaf children's development, these teachers perceive themselves as lacking adequate knowledge and preparation to effectively incorporate this approach in their classrooms. To address this gap, professional development opportunities should be provided to develop knowledge and confidence in teachers, empowering them to effectively implement signed rhyme and rhythm with deaf children.

Fingerspelling and Its Role in Translanguaging

Fingerspelling is a critical component of many sign languages. This manual representation of orthographic code is one key way in which signers engage in translanguaging, drawing from all of their linguistic and semiotic resources to support communication. Translanguaging in bimodal bilinguals is unique because it involves drawing from languages in different modalities, namely a signed language like American Sign Language and a spoken language like English (or its written form). Fingerspelling can be seen as a unique product of the unified linguistic system that translanguaging theories purport, as it blends features of both sign and print. The goals of this paper are twofold: to integrate existing research on fingerspelling in order to characterize it as a cognitive-linguistic phenomenon and to discuss the role of fingerspelling in translanguaging and communication. We will first review and synthesize research from linguistics and cognitive neuroscience to summarize our current understanding of fingerspelling, its production, comprehension, and acquisition. We will then discuss how fingerspelling relates to translanguaging theories and how it can be incorporated into translanguaging practices to support literacy and other communication goals.

Four American Sign Language Learner Groups: Are They Really Different?

We investigated the receptive American Sign Language (ASL) skills of four separate groups using the 42-item ASL-Receptive Skills Test: Deaf high school-aged students who attended a residential school; deaf incoming college students who preferred signed language; deaf incoming college students who preferred spoken language; and typically hearing college-aged second language-second modality learners (M2L2) of ASL. Many deaf students learn ASL as a delayed first language due to a lack of sign language models within their home environments. In contrast, M2L2 students likely engage in some transfer between their first (spoken) and second (signed) language when learning ASL. All four groups scored similarly overall on the ASL-RST (~77% correct), and all four groups scored the lowest for number-distribution, spatial verbs location, size-and-shape-specifiers, and role shift. We present instructional implications that include incorporation of ASL standards and evidence-based instructional strategies for all four groups.

Enriching Deaf Children's American Sign Language Phonological Awareness: A Quasi-Experimental Study

With the knowledge that deaf children benefit from early exposure to signed language, questions are raised about the role of specific types of language input that are beneficial in early childhood classrooms. This quasi-experimental study explores the effects of ASL rhyme, rhythm, and handshape awareness activities on 4- to 6-year-old deaf children's ASL phonological awareness. Deaf children received three-week structured activities and four-week teacher-choice activities that targeted handshape awareness. Results yielded evidence that interventions as brief as 12 minutes daily for up to 2 months can produce positive effects on deaf children's phonological awareness. Furthermore, although the intervention focused only on handshape awareness, children's positive gains on the ASL Phonological Awareness Test suggests one targeted phonological awareness skill (e.g., handshape) may generalize to other phonological awareness skills (e.g., location and movement). Further investigation is needed on the relationship between ASL phonological awareness and overall language and literacy skills in both ASL and English.

Effects of ASL Rhyme and Rhythm on Deaf Children's Engagement Behavior and Accuracy in Recitation: Evidence from a Single Case Design

Early language acquisition is critical for lifelong success in language, literacy, and academic studies. There is much to explore about the specific techniques used to foster deaf children’s language development. The use of rhyme and rhythm in American Sign Language (ASL) remains understudied. This single-subject study compared the effects of rhyming and non-rhyming ASL stories on the engagement behavior and accuracy in recitation of five deaf children between three and six years old in an ASL/English bilingual early childhood classroom. With the application of alternating treatment design with initial baseline, it is the first experimental research of its kind on ASL rhyme and rhythm. Baseline data revealed the lack of rhyme awareness in children and informed the decision to provide intervention as a condition to examine the effects of explicit handshape rhyme awareness instruction on increasing engagement behavior and accuracy in recitation. There were four phases in this study: baseline, handshape rhyme awareness intervention, alternating treatments, and preference. Visual analysis and total mean and mean difference procedures were employed to analyze results. The findings indicate that recitation skills in young deaf children can be supported through interventions utilizing ASL rhyme and rhythm supplemented with ASL phonological awareness activities. A potential case of sign language impairment was identified in a native signer, creating a new line of inquiry in using ASL rhyme, rhythm, and phonological awareness to detect atypical language patterns.

Computerized Sign Language-Based Literacy Training for Deaf and Hard-of-Hearing Children

Strengthening the connections between sign language and written language may improve reading skills in deaf and hard-of-hearing (DHH) signing children. The main aim of the present study was to investigate whether computerized sign language-based literacy training improves reading skills in DHH signing children who are learning to read. Further, longitudinal associations between sign language skills and developing reading skills were investigated. Participants were recruited from Swedish state special schools for DHH children, where pupils are taught in both sign language and spoken language. Reading skills were assessed at five occasions and the intervention was implemented in a cross-over design. Results indicated that reading skills improved over time and that development of word reading was predicted by the ability to imitate unfamiliar lexical signs, but there was only weak evidence that it was supported by the intervention. These results demonstrate for the first time a longitudinal link between sign-based abilities and word reading in DHH signing children who are learning to read. We suggest that the active construction of novel lexical forms may be a supramodal mechanism underlying word reading development.

Generation of Signs Within Semantic and Phonological Categories: Data from Deaf Adults and Children Who Use American Sign Language

Two key areas of language development include semantic and phonological knowledge. Semantic knowledge relates to word and concept knowledge. Phonological knowledge relates to how language parameters combine to create meaning. We investigated signing deaf adults' and children's semantic and phonological sign generation via one-minute tasks, including animals, foods, and specific handshapes. We investigated the effects of chronological age, age of sign language acquisition/years at school site, gender, presence of a disability, and geographical location (i.e., USA and Puerto Rico) on participants' performance and relations among tasks. In general, the phonological task appeared more difficult than the semantic tasks, students generated more animals than foods, age, and semantic performance correlated for the larger sample of U.S. students, and geographical variation included use of fingerspelling and specific signs. Compared to their peers, deaf students with disabilities generated fewer semantic items. These results provide an initial snapshot of students' semantic and phonological sign generation.

A Case of Specific Language Impairment in a Deaf Signer of American Sign Language

This article describes the case of a deaf native signer of American Sign Language (ASL) with a specific language impairment (SLI). School records documented normal cognitive development but atypical language development. Data include school records; interviews with the child, his mother, and school professionals; ASL and English evaluations; and a comprehensive neuropsychological and psychoeducational evaluation, and they span an approximate period of 7.5 years (11;10-19;6) including scores from school records (11;10-16;5) and a 3.5-year period (15;10-19;6) during which we collected linguistic and neuropsychological data. Results revealed that this student has average intelligence, intact visual perceptual skills, visuospatial skills, and motor skills but demonstrates challenges with some memory and sequential processing tasks. Scores from ASL testing signaled language impairment and marked difficulty with fingerspelling. The student also had significant deficits in English vocabulary, spelling, reading comprehension, reading fluency, and writing. Accepted SLI diagnostic criteria exclude deaf individuals from an SLI diagnosis, but the authors propose modified criteria in this work. The results of this study have practical implications for professionals including school psychologists, speech language pathologists, and ASL specialists. The results also support the theoretical argument that SLI can be evident regardless of the modality in which it is communicated.

Longitudinal Receptive American Sign Language Skills Across a Diverse Deaf Student Body

This article presents results of a longitudinal study of receptive American Sign Language (ASL) skills for a large portion of the student body at a residential school for the deaf across four consecutive years. Scores were analyzed by age, gender, parental hearing status, years attending the residential school, and presence of a disability (i.e., deaf with a disability). Years 1 through 4 included the ASL Receptive Skills Test (ASL-RST); Years 2 through 4 also included the Receptive Test of ASL (RT-ASL). Student performance for both measures positively correlated with age; deaf students with deaf parents scored higher than their same-age peers with hearing parents in some instances but not others; and those with a documented disability tended to score lower than their peers without disabilities. These results provide longitudinal findings across a diverse segment of the deaf/hard of hearing residential school population.

Evidence of an association between sign language phonological awareness and word reading in deaf and hard-of-hearing children

BACKGROUND AND AIMS

Children with good phonological awareness (PA) are often good word readers. Here, we asked whether Swedish deaf and hard-of-hearing (DHH) children who are more aware of the phonology of Swedish Sign Language, a language with no orthography, are better at reading words in Swedish.

METHODS AND PROCEDURES

We developed the Cross-modal Phonological Awareness Test (C-PhAT) that can be used to assess PA in both Swedish Sign Language (C-PhAT-SSL) and Swedish (C-PhAT-Swed), and investigated how C-PhAT performance was related to word reading as well as linguistic and cognitive skills. We validated C-PhAT-Swed and administered C-PhAT-Swed and C-PhAT-SSL to DHH children who attended Swedish deaf schools with a bilingual curriculum and were at an early stage of reading.

OUTCOMES AND RESULTS

C-PhAT-SSL correlated significantly with word reading for DHH children. They performed poorly on C-PhAT-Swed and their scores did not correlate significantly either with C-PhAT-SSL or word reading, although they did correlate significantly with cognitive measures.

CONCLUSIONS AND IMPLICATIONS

These results provide preliminary evidence that DHH children with good sign language PA are better at reading words and show that measures of spoken language PA in DHH children may be confounded by individual differences in cognitive skills.

How deaf American Sign Language/English bilingual children become proficient readers: an emic perspective

A primary tenet underlying American Sign Language/English bilingual education for deaf students is that early access to a visual language, developed in conjunction with language planning principles, provides a foundation for literacy in English. The goal of this study is to obtain an emic perspective on bilingual deaf readers transitioning from learning to read to reading to learn. Analysis of 12 interactive, semi-structured interviews identified informal and formal teaching and learning practices in ASL/English bilingual homes and classrooms. These practices value, reinforce, and support the bidirectional acquisition of both languages and provide a strong foundation for literacy.