The effect of communication anxiety upon signing effectiveness among the profoundly hearing‐impaired

Anxiety influences and interferes with the production of messages, yet findings linking trait anxiety with communication gestures and movement have been inconsistent and weak. This may be because most studies observe the communicative movements which complement the message rather than movements which constitute the primary message. This study examined the influence of predisposi‐tional anxiety on gestures when they are the central channel of communication— the signing behavior of deaf students.

Anxiety was significantly related to signing in that more predispositionally anxious students' signs were less dear, slower, smaller, less intense, were more incomplete, and generally less effective compared to less anxious students. However compared to the general population, deaf students were not found to be more fearful of communication overall.     

谣言与革命--关于1911年武昌起义的政治传播学分析

在1911年的武昌起义中,谣言发挥了十分重要的作用。首先,在起义的发动过程中,“清政府正在捕杀汉族士兵”谣言将大多数士兵逼入造反者行列;其次,在起义扩大的过程中,清政府无法控制作为舆论领袖的地方绅士们,致使各种谣言进一步侵蚀其合法性。清政府虽然也企图通过谣言收拾人心,但因其公信力的彻底丧失,并未达到预期效果。     

The role of interpreters in inclusive classrooms

The roles of interpreters in an inclusive classroom were examined through a qualitative, 3-year case study of three interpreters in an inclusive school. Interviews were conducted with interpreters, classroom teachers, special education teachers, and administrators. The interview data were supplemented with observations and field notes. Results indicate that in addition to sign interpreting between American Sign Language and speech, the interpreters clarified teacher directions, facilitated peer interaction, tutored the deaf children, and kept the teachers and special educators informed of the deaf children's progress. The interpreter/aides and the classroom teachers preferred this full-participant interpreter role, while the special educators and administrators preferred a translator role. Classroom teachers were more comfortable with full-time interpreters who knew the classroom routine, while the special educators and administrators feared that full-time interpreters fostered child and teacher dependence. These issues are discussed in terms of congruence with the Registry of Interpreters code of ethics and how integration of young children might be best facilitated.     

I am not unskilled and unaware: deaf and hearing learners’ self-assessments of linguistic and nonlinguistic skills

The unskilled and unaware effect refers to the finding that individuals who are less knowledgeable or less skilled in a domain are relatively less able to evaluate their level of skill or effectively utilise feedback relative to individuals who are more skilled. Studies finding deaf students less accurate than hearing students in estimating their English vocabulary knowledge and in judging how much they are learning from material presented via sign language have attributed those results to the unskilled and unaware effect, citing the lack of language fluencies frequently demonstrated among deaf learners. The present study addressed the issue more directly by comparing both deaf and hearing individuals who were more and less skilled in four domains, three linguistic and one nonlinguistic. Results indicated that even individuals who are unskilled in a nonlinguistic domain can evaluate their performance when they are aware of what skilled performance would look like, and that unskilled and unaware effects can be influenced by individuals’ desires to be skilled.     

Strategy usage among deaf and hearing readers

High school youths who were prelingually and profoundly deaf, hearing elementary-school-age youths, and hearing reading-disabled high school youths read expository texts and filled in deleted words and phrases. After making word replacements, they explained their decisions in sign or verbally. As expected, the hearing youths had an easier time filling in the deleted portions and explaining what strategies they were using. While the deaf youths reported using similar strategies as the hearing youths, the frequency of each type of strategy differed. Deaf readers more often relied on rereading and background knowledge, while the hearing readers made greater use of context clues. The results suggest that instruction for deaf readers should include more effective comprehension strategies.     

Is there a link between hearing aid use, employment, and income?

This paper examines hearing aid use by 60 congenitally deaf individuals who attended special education units in South Australia. The study indicates that only one-third to half of deaf adults wore their hearing aids in social situations for speech detection. Just over one-third (n = 22) of the deaf adults involved in this study wore their hearing aids at work and less than half (n = 27) wore their hearing aids at home. Younger deaf adults were more likely to wear their hearing aids in the home than older deaf adults. Younger deaf adults tended to wear their hearing aids more frequently when they were at school if they had perceived their teachers had a positive attitude to deafness. This study found that there was no statistically significant relationship between wearing hearing aids and employment status. There was also no statistically significant difference in hearing aid use between men and women. The low use of hearing aids could be attributed at least in part to the current Australian policy regarding supply and servicing of hearing aids to congenitally deaf individuals which ceases to be free after the individual reaches 21 years of age.     

Views from the field: program directors' perceptions of teacher education and the education of students who are deaf or hard of hearing

Arandom sample of directors of programs for the deaf in North America were surveyed to get their views about the skills that teacher education programs need to be teaching future teachers of students who are deaf or hard of hearing. The directors were queried about literacy practices, classroom management strategies, and communication strategies used in their programs, and were encouraged to comment freely on the questionnaire items presented to them. Program directors predicted a need for more itinerant and resource teachers. The survey also revealed that programs for the deaf are highly behaviorist (i.e., You do this and you'll get that) in the way they induce students to learn and in how they manage student behavior.     

The career status of deaf women. A comparative look.

Discrepancies in labor force, occupation, and earnings outcomes were observed between men and women in a follow-up study of 4,900 deaf high school graduates who had responded to annual surveys conducted from 1982 to 1989. Reasons for the disparities were sought by further examination of the postsecondary programs undertaken, degrees earned, labor force activities, jobs held, and socioeconomic status. Despite efforts to expand career awareness and postsecondary programs for deaf people, deaf women continue to pursue a relatively narrow range of programs, leading to stereotypical female careers. Moreover, when women earn less than a bachelor's degree, they experience high underemployment and unemployment relative to deaf men and hearing peers. Without concerted intervention, this condition may be exacerbated as the labor market demands that workers be more professionally and technically trained in career areas where deaf females are yet underrepresented.     

The impact of visual communication on the intersubjective development of early parent-child interaction with 18- to 24-month-old deaf toddlers

This article presents a study that examined the impact of visual communication on the quality of the early interaction between deaf and hearing mothers and fathers and their deaf children aged between 18 and 24 months. Three communication mode groups of parent-deaf child dyads that differed by the use of signing and visual-tactile communication strategies were involved: (a) hearing parents communicating with their deaf child in an auditory/oral way, (b) hearing parents using total communication, and (c) deaf parents using sign language. Based on Loots and colleagues' intersubjective developmental theory, parent-deaf child interaction was analyzed according to the occurrence of intersubjectivity during free play with a standard set of toys. The data analyses indicated that the use of sign language in a sequential visual way of communication enabled the deaf parents to involve their 18- to 24-month-old deaf infants in symbolic intersubjectivity, whereas hearing parents who hold on to oral-only communication were excluded from involvement in symbolic intersubjectivity with their deaf infants. Hearing parents using total communication were more similar to deaf parents, but they still differed from deaf parents in exchanging and sharing symbolic and linguistic meaning with their deaf child.     

Conversations between deaf children and their hearing mothers: pragmatic and dialogic characteristics

We examined communication between hearing mothers and their deaf or hearing children longitudinally at child-ages 22 months and 3 years. Specifically, we analyzed both the effects of child deafness and developmental change on pragmatic and dialogic characteristics of communication. From 22 months to 3 years, deaf and hearing children's communicative skills improved similarly along some dimensions: as they grew older, both deaf and hearing children increased the amount they communicated, became increasingly responsive to their mothers' attentional focus, and were responsible for initiating a higher proportion of the dyads' conversations. On the other hand, deaf children were less skilled at maintaining topics, and the pragmatic function of their communication was more likely to be unclear compared to hearing children. Deaf children were also more likely to direct their mothers and less likely to ask questions than hearing children. Communication by hearing mothers was primarily examined to determine the degree to which they controlled the interactions. Overall, mothers of deaf children were only more controlling along one dimension. Mothers of deaf children used more response controls than mothers of hearing children. However, the majority of measures suggested they did not exert more topic or turn-taking controls than did mothers of hearing children. In addition, mothers of deaf and hearing children seemed equally sensitive to their children's communication abilities. Communication by mothers of both deaf and hearing children changed in similar ways as their children developed. Most of the differences in communication by mothers of deaf and hearing children seemed attributable to the deaf children's linguistic delays. The results suggest that intervention efforts should be focused on fostering linguistic development and not general communication skills or changing maternal conversational control.     

Integration of computers and related technologies into deaf education teacher preparation programs

The study examined how computer technology is used, modeled, and taught in programs that prepare future teachers of students who are deaf or hard of hearing. Data were collected through two self-reported survey instruments sent to participants from two different groups: (a) deaf education faculty (n = 233) and (b) administrators of programs serving students who are deaf or hard of hearing (n = 100). Among the faculty who responded to the survey, 99% said they used computers and printers for instruction during class, 84% said they used VCRs for instruction during class, and 56% said they used video cameras for instruction during class. The information that was reported on how technology was being used for instruction and how its use was being taught to students in deaf education teacher preparation programs indicates that the need persists for integration of technology into these programs. A need likewise continues for improved instructional strategies relative to computers and technology.     

Identification, assessment, and intervention strategies for deaf and hard of hearing students with learning disabilities

The purpose of the study was to ascertain methods of identification used by teachers of the deaf and hard of hearing who were working with students with learning disabilities, the training these teachers had received, and the accommodations and modifications they had implemented for their students. A 10-item survey was designed to solicit opinions and implementation procedures. Surveys went to teachers in a four-state region of the Midwest; 91 responded. Teachers indicated the use of various criteria to identify deaf and hard of hearing students with learning disabilities, and indicted that they incorporated a variety of accommodations to meet these students' needs. The survey showed that 50% of respondents did not feel adequately prepared to teach deaf and hard of hearing students with learning disabilities. Teachers expressed a desire for more training in identification, assessment, and intervention.     

It's All a Matter of Timing: Sign Visibility and Sign Reference in Deaf and Hearing Mothers of 18-Month-Old Children

The signed and spoken language produced by 14 mothers to their 18-month-old children during free play was analyzed. All the children had profound prelingual deafness. Seven of the mothers were profoundly deaf and fluent users of British Sign Language (BSL) or Auslan. The other seven were hearing and had enrolled in a signing program. Maternal signed utterances were classified according to whether they were made in the child's line of sight and whether they had a salient context; that is, they referred to an object or event at the child's current focus of attention. Spoken utterances were coded by word length. Comparisons between the two groups showed that both deaf and hearing mothers produced a majority of single-sign utterances (rather than utterances containing two or more signs). Deaf mothers also produced a majority of single-word spoken utterances, whereas the hearing mothers produced a significantly greater proportion of multiword utterances. As predicted, deaf mothers were more successful than hearing mothers in presenting signed utterances with a salient context that were visible to their children. Across the group as a whole, the total number of visible and salient signed utterances produced in 10 minutes was positively correlated with the total number of occasions on which mothers successfully redirected their child's attention or the child spontaneously turned to look at the mother. This suggests that deaf children who are visually attentive to their mothers receive a greater number of visible signed utterances with a salient context. I argue that this provides a more secure context for early language development.     

Sign language comprehension: the case of Spanish sign language

This study aims to answer the question, how much of Spanish Sign Language interpreting deaf individuals really understand. Study sampling included 36 deaf people (deafness ranging from severe to profound; variety depending on the age at which they learned sign language) and 36 hearing people who had good knowledge of sign language (most were interpreters). Sign language comprehension was assessed using passages of secondary level. After being exposed to the passages, the participants had to tell what they had understood about them, answer a set of related questions, and offer a title for the passage. Sign language comprehension by deaf participants was quite acceptable but not as good as that by hearing signers who, unlike deaf participants, were not only late learners of sign language as a second language but had also learned it through formal training.     

Inclusive instruction and learning for deaf students in postsecondary education

This article explores how students who are deaf and their instructors experience mainstream college classes. Both quantitative and qualitative procedures were used to examine student access to information and their sense of belonging and engagement in learning. Instructors were asked to discuss their approach to teaching and any instructional modifications made to address the needs of deaf learners. Results indicate that deaf students viewed classroom communication and engagement in a similar manner as their hearing peers. Deaf students were more concerned about the pace of instruction and did not feel as much a part of the 'university family' as did their hearing peers. Faculty generally indicated that they made few if any modifications for deaf students and saw support service faculty as responsible for the success or failure of these students. We discuss results of these and additional findings with regard to barriers to equal access and strategies for overcoming these barriers.     

Deaf and hearing partnerships: ethical and communication considerations

With few exceptions, a hearing perspective controls the direction of deaf education nationally and internationally. People who are hearing have a powerful influence over decisions that affect legislation, policies, professional organizations, research agendas, and curricular decisions related to deaf education. Although this situation is changing in some arenas, people who are deaf often have relatively less influence than their hearing counterparts in shaping the educational agenda. The authors, one deaf and one hearing, relate their views on the challenge of changing this imbalance of power and discuss their personal experiences as friends and professional collaborators as they offer strategies for creating and nurturing partnerships between people who are deaf and people who are hearing.     

Language and theory of mind: a study of deaf children

Theory-of-mind (ToM) abilities were studied in 176 deaf children aged 3 years 11 months to 8 years 3 months who use either American Sign Language (ASL) or oral English, with hearing parents or deaf parents. A battery of tasks tapping understanding of false belief and knowledge state and language skills, ASL or English, was given to each child. There was a significant delay on ToM tasks in deaf children of hearing parents, who typically demonstrate language delays, regardless of whether they used spoken English or ASL. In contrast, deaf children from deaf families performed identically to same-aged hearing controls (N=42). Both vocabulary and understanding syntactic complements were significant independent predictors of success on verbal and low-verbal ToM tasks.     

How the medical professionals impact ASL and English families’ language planning policy

This article explores the journey of eight hearing families of bimodal-bilingual deaf children as they navigate the decision-making process reflecting their beliefs and values about American Sign Language (ASL) and English through their family language policy framework. The resources offered to families with deaf children often reflect a medical view, rather than a cultural perspective of being deaf. Because medical professionals, educators, and specialists who work with deaf and hard-of-hearing children have a strong influence on family members’ opinions, beliefs, and attitudes about being deaf, it is even more crucial to correct misconceptions about ASL and empower families to develop a family language policy that is inclusive of their deaf and hard-of-hearing children. This article informs researchers, teachers, and other professionals about the potential benefits and challenges of supporting the families’ ASL and English language planning policy.