But what if the deaf have their own language—not oral but signed—as rich and expressive as any oral language, and as suitable for discussing science, art, or any other topic? What if this language is central to an independent culture of the deaf, with its own history and traditions, its own art forms and poetry? The deaf would then have to be viewed not as sharing a common pathology, but as a l...

This article examined a database of Australian daily newspapers on the terms cochlear implant and deaf children to investigate how journalists and columnists report competing models of deafness: as either "medical" (deafness is a condition to be cured) or "sociocultural" (deafness provides a way of life to be lived). The results from the cochlear implant search favored a medical model, but the ...

Substantive progress has been achieved in advancing emergency response interventions during disasters including assistance of internally displaced persons (IDPs). Explicit operational technical guidelines and management strategies have been successfully applied through the "cluster approach". In 2008-09 armed conflict in several districts of the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP) province and the Federall...

The development of a visual speech apparatus that gives information about the identity of vowels spoken in a CVC context is described. The principle of the apparatus is based on a dimensional analysis of the vowel spectra. In developing the device, the demands of the specific speech correction setting of the deaf were taken into account as much as possible. From a number of physical and statist...

A diverse panel of experts convened in Bad Ischl, Austria, in June of 2012 for the purpose of coming to consensus on essential principles that guide family-centered early intervention with children who are deaf or hard of hearing (D/HH). The consensus panel included parents, deaf professionals, early intervention program leaders, early intervention specialists, and researchers from 10 nations. ...

This study investigated deaf adolescents' implicit and explicit awareness of subject-verb number agreement. In Experiment 1, a self-paced reading task, the reading times of deaf and hearing children (matched for reading and chronological age, mean=8;3 and 13;10 years) increased when sentences contained disagreeing subject-verb number markers. However, deaf adolescents' slowing occurred later in...

With respect to reading vocabulary knowledge and deafness, this article addresses two broad questions: (1) Why is vocabulary knowledge related to reading comprehension ability? (2) How is reading vocabulary (i.e., word meanings) acquired? The article argues that the answers to these questions are best addressed by a vocabulary acquisition model labeled the knowledge model. In essence, this mode...

This paper is a studied look at the TAGS, TASL, and CASLLS criterion-referenced language assessments as well as an inquiry into how teachers of the deaf use the TAGS currently as a teaching tool.

Gesture can illustrate objects and events in the world by iconically reproducing elements of those objects and events. Children do not begin to express ideas iconically, however, until after they have begun to use conventional forms. In this paper, we investigate how children's use of iconic resources in gesture relates to the developing structure of their communicative systems. Using longitudi...

CentraZ Institute for the Deaf, St. Louis, Missour