Impacts of Visual Sonority and Handshape Markedness on Second Language Learning of American Sign Language
The roles of visual sonority and handshape markedness in sign language acquisition and production were investigated. In Experiment 1, learners were taught sign-nonobject correspondences that varied in sign movement sonority and handshape markedness. Results from a sign-picture matching task revealed that high sonority signs were more accurately matched, especially when the sign contained a marked handshape. In Experiment 2, learners produced these familiar signs in addition to novel signs, which differed based on sonority and markedness. Results from a key-release reaction time reproduction task showed that learners tended...
Source: Journal of Deaf Studies and Deaf Education - March 8, 2016 Category: Audiology Authors: Williams, J. T., Newman, S. D. Tags: Empirical Manuscript Source Type: research

Academic Achievement of Deaf and Hard-of-Hearing Students in an ASL/English Bilingual Program
This study calls for a paradigm shift in thinking about deaf education by focusing on characteristics shared among successful deaf signing readers, specifically ASL fluency. (Source: Journal of Deaf Studies and Deaf Education)
Source: Journal of Deaf Studies and Deaf Education - March 8, 2016 Category: Audiology Authors: Hrastinski, I., Wilbur, R. B. Tags: Empirical Manuscript Source Type: research

Effects of Hearing Status and Sign Language Use on Working Memory
Deaf individuals have been found to score lower than hearing individuals across a variety of memory tasks involving both verbal and nonverbal stimuli, particularly those requiring retention of serial order. Deaf individuals who are native signers, meanwhile, have been found to score higher on visual-spatial memory tasks than on verbal-sequential tasks and higher on some visual-spatial tasks than hearing nonsigners. However, hearing status and preferred language modality (signed or spoken) frequently are confounded in such studies. That situation is resolved in the present study by including deaf students who use spoken lan...
Source: Journal of Deaf Studies and Deaf Education - March 8, 2016 Category: Audiology Authors: Marschark, M., Sarchet, T., Trani, A. Tags: Empirical Manuscript Source Type: research

Empathy and Theory of Mind in Deaf and Hearing Children
Empathy (or sharing another’s emotion) and theory of mind (ToM: the understanding that behavior is guided by true and false beliefs) are cornerstones of human social life and relationships. In contrast to ToM, there has been little study of empathy’s development, especially in deaf children. Two studies of a total of 117 children (52 hearing; 65 deaf children of hearing parents) aged 4–13 years were therefore designed to (a) compare levels of empathy in deaf and hearing children, and (b) explore correlations of ToM with empathy in deaf and hearing groups. Results showed that (a) deaf children scored lower...
Source: Journal of Deaf Studies and Deaf Education - March 8, 2016 Category: Audiology Authors: Peterson, C. C. Tags: Empirical Manuscript Source Type: research

Psychometric Properties of the Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire and Mental Health Problems Among Children With Hearing Loss
This study investigates the factor structure of one of the most widely used screening tools, the Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire (SDQ), and the prevalence of mental health problems among D/HH children. Our data were derived from two independent samples of D/HH children, one from 2007 of children (N = 334) in bilingual/bicultural educational programs and another from 2014 of children (N = 233) in mostly mainstream oral educational programs with cochlear implants. Teacher-SDQs were collected for the 2007 sample and parent-SDQs for the 2014 sample. The factor structure of the SDQ was examined from both Exploratory Fa...
Source: Journal of Deaf Studies and Deaf Education - March 8, 2016 Category: Audiology Authors: Niclasen, J., Dammeyer, J. Tags: Empirical Manuscript Source Type: research