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PubMed1995

Deafness in childhood: 2. Are deaf children getting the education they need?

Under the 1981 Education Act, deaf children should be assessed for a "Statement of Educational Needs". Deaf children under school age are supported by a peripatetic teacher for the deaf. There are different schools of thought about the best methods for teaching deaf children. Systems include the oral/aural, "Total Communication" and sign language methods Speech and language therapy is important but provision in schools is patchy and there may be disputes about whether it comes under the education or health budget. Ideally, each health district should have a District Children's Hearing Assessment Unit, which accepts self-referrals as well as referrals from professionals. The National Deaf Children's Society recommends that each child should have a key worker to co-ordinate the various services. At present the quality of schooling and support a deaf child receives is patchy and depends on the luck of where the parents happen to live.

Child↗

PubMed2002

Providing accessible services to minority ethnic deaf people: insights from a study in Alberta, Canada.

Evidence suggests that minority ethnic people in general and minority ethnic deaf people (MEDP) in particular face numerous formidable obstacles in their attempts to gain access to services in the community. Deaf people from minority ethnic groups who have no English and/or American Sign Language (ASL) skills have particular difficulty gaining access to services. The study therefore was concerned with identifying some of the special needs and difficulties of MEDP who are trying to gain access to services in multiethnic communities. Qualitative approaches were used in data gathering and analysis. The results indicated six areas of difficulty for MEDP in gaining access to services: (a) communication barriers, (b) a lack of recognition of the needs of MEDP, (c) inappropriate service delivery and a lack of information on available services, (d) insufficient cultural sensitivity on the part of service providers, (e) issues of user involvement, and (f) a lack of specific programs for MEDP.

Canada↗

PubMed2001

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.

Humans↗

PubMed2005

Incidental word learning in a hearing child of deaf adults.

It is unclear how children develop the ability to learn words incidentally (i.e., without direct instruction or numerous exposures). This investigation examined the early achievement of this skill by longitudinally tracking the expressive vocabulary and incidental word-learning capacities of a hearing child of Deaf adults who was natively learning American Sign Language (ASL) and spoken English. Despite receiving only 20% of language input in spoken English, the child's expressive vocabularies at 16 and 20 months of age, in each language, were similar to those of monolingual age-matched peers. At 16 months of age, the child showed signs of greater proficiency in the incidental learning of novel ASL signs than she did for spoken English words. At 20 months of age, the child was skilled at incidental word learning in both languages. These results support the methodology as it applies to examining theoretical models of incidental word learning. They also suggest that bilingual children can achieve typical vocabulary levels (even with minimal input in one of the languages) and that the development of incidental word learning follows a similar trajectory in ASL and spoken English.

Adult↗

PubMedDate not supplied

Deaf education in China: history, current issues, and emerging deaf voices.

An overview is provided of (a) deaf education in China, (b) views of deaf Chinese, and (c) recent empowering international collaborations. China's national policy focuses on oral/aural education and hearing rehabilitation. However, everyday practice in schools for deaf children includes various forms of Chinese Sign Language. Early childhood education focuses on speech and hearing. Elementary and secondary school curricula reflect low expectations for deaf students and lack the same academic content provided to hearing students. There are limited higher education opportunities. There are no support services such as note takers or interpreters for mainstreamed students. There are no deaf teacher preparation or interpreter training programs. Jobs are few; the vast majority of deaf adults are unemployed. Deaf people interviewed for the article describe their needs, their dreams, and the changes they are witnessing, which result in part from recent empowering international collaborations.

Achievement↗

PubMed2006

A compelling desire for deafness.

A case is described of a patient who has a compelling and persistent desire to become deaf. She often kept cotton wool moistened with oil in her ears and was learning sign language. Living without sound appeared to be a severe form of avoidance behavior from hyperacusis and misophonia. She had a borderline personality disorder that was associated with a poor sense of self. Her desire to be deaf may be one aspect of gaining an identity for herself and to compensate for feeling like an alien and gaining acceptance in the Deaf community. Will a compelling desire for deafness ever become a recognized mental disorder one day for which hearing patients may be offered elective deafness after a period of assessment and living like a deaf person? Those working in the field of deafness should be aware that individuals may occasionally be seeking elective deafness or self-inflicting deafness to obtain a hearing aid.

Adult↗

PubMed1996

Silence is liberating: removing the handcuffs on grammatical expression in the manual modality.

Grammatical properties are found in conventional sign languages of the deaf and in unconventional gesture systems created by deaf children lacking language models. However, they do not arise in spontaneous gestures produced along with speech. The authors propose a model explaining when the manual modality will assume grammatical properties and when it will not. The model argues that two grammatical features, segmentation and hierarchical combination, appear in all settings in which one human communicates symbolically with another. These properties are preferentially assumed by speech whenever words are spoken, constraining the manual modality to a global form. However, when the manual modality must carry the full burden of communication, it is freed from the global form it assumes when integrated with speech--only to be constrained by the task of symbolic communication to take on the grammatical properties of segmentation and hierarchical combination.

Adult↗

PubMed2005

[Assistance to the deaf in the health area as a factor of social inclusion].

The purposes of this article are to discuss the assistance to deaf people in the health area as a factor of social inclusion; to investigate with the deaf how the link with health workers is established; and to verify the deaf people's perception of the presence of sign language interpreters when they get health assistance. This is a descriptive and analytical survey with a qualitative approach carried out at a special school in Goiânia. The sample was comprised of 20 deaf students, and semi-structured interviews were used to collect the data. It was verified that the link is established when health workers are able to communicate with the deaf. The inclusion of the deaf in the health services is an evidence of difficulties in communication. It was concluded that the professional-client relationship must be improved, that the link occurs when the client feels himself/ herself understood, and that the presence of an interpreter improves but is not enough to ensure the inclusion of the deaf.

Adult↗

PubMedDate not supplied

Deaf and hearing individuals' beliefs about the capabilities of deaf people.

The study explored the beliefs of 100 residents of Greece about the capabilities of deaf people living in that country. Participants included deaf adults who communicated in Greek Sign Language (GSL), deaf adults who communicated orally, hearing adults who attended GSL courses, and hearing adults who did not attend such courses. Beliefs were explored through the ODP (Opinions About Deaf People) scale (Berkay, Gardner, & Smith, 1995) and an open-ended interview. All participant groups viewed deaf people's capabilities positively, but Deaf users of GSL expressed the most positive beliefs. The findings suggest that less positive beliefs reflect diverse ideological views toward GSL and Deaf culture or an awareness of the obstacles preventing deaf people from developing their potential. The Deaf community's role in empowering deaf people and the role of GSL courses in promoting awareness regarding deaf people are also discussed.

Adult↗

PubMed2006

The relative difficulty of signed arithmetic story problems for primary level deaf and hard-of-hearing students.

This study determines the relative difficulty and associated strategy use of arithmetic (addition and subtraction) story problems when presented in American Sign Language to primary level (K-3) deaf and hard-of-hearing students. Results showed that deaf and hard-of-hearing students may consider and respond to arithmetic story problems differently than their hearing peers, with the critical dimension in problem difficulty being based on the operation typically used to solve the problem, not the story within the problem. The types of strategies used by the students supported the order of problem difficulty. The visual-spatial nature of the problem presentation appeared not to assist the deaf and hard-of-hearing students in solving the problems. Factors that may have contributed to this pattern of problem difficulty are discussed so that educators can better align mathematics instruction to the thinking of the deaf child.

Child↗

PubMed2005

Developing a standardized comprehensive health survey for use with deaf adults.

THERE IS LIMITED INFORMATION on how communication barriers impact on the health of deaf individuals. The present article describes the development of a standardized interview tool to collect health-related information from deaf adults via face-to-face interviews in American Sign Language (ASL). Questions were selected largely from existing standardized questionnaires. Key steps in standardizing the instrument included the creation of an ASL gloss version of the survey and extensive interviewer training. The instrument was pilot-tested and revised prior to implementation. There were 139 questions on the final instrument. A total of 203 interviews were conducted between November 2002 and March 2003. A standardized interview survey administered in ASL proved an effective and well-accepted means of collecting health-related information from a diverse sample of deaf individuals. Several challenges were encountered throughout the process, and the resulting lessons will be useful to future research efforts.

Adult↗

PubMed1990

Making adult education accessible to the deaf. A model of direct instructor communication in ASL.

The purpose of this study was to develop a model of direct communication in American Sign Language for mainstreamed adult education courses. The model uses an individual instruction format with limited lecture time. Data were collected for 23 students (12 hearing and 11 deaf) newly enrolled in a mainstreamed word processing class. They were compared on average hours required to complete an exercise, average rates of attendance, and weekly drop rate. Attendance and drop rates were compared for new and returning students in the mainstreamed class (34 students) and 25 hearing students from a nonmainstreamed class. In addition, the average number of hours required to complete the exercises was compared for 10 new hearing students from the mainstreamed class and 11 new hearing students from the nonmainstreamed class. No significant differences were found in any of the comparisons. The study recommends further research to compare this Direct Instructor Communication Model with other more traditional deaf education models.

Adult↗

PubMed2005

Deafhood: a concept stressing possibilities, not deficits1.

Born-deaf, sign-language-using people have for the past two centuries been placed within a succession of externally constructed models, notably the traditional "medical" or pathological model. This perceives them primarily as biologically deficient beings in need of cures or charity in order to be successfully assimilated into society. This paper proposes that the concept of colonialism is the one that most appropriately describes the "existential" reality of deaf communities, and offers instead a deaf-constructed model. Utilizing recent confirmation of the existence of bona-fide feaf cultures, it highlights the extent to which these communities have resisted such models, maintaining their own beliefs concerning their validity and quality of their existence, and what they offer to non-deaf societies. This "vulnerability as strength" is manifested through the concept of deafhood, which is presented as the first move towards a formal narrative of decolonizing and liberatory possibilities.

Adaptation, Psychological↗

PubMed1999

Deaf murderers: clinical and forensic issues.

Data are reported on 28 deaf individuals who were convicted, pled guilty, or have been charged and awaiting trial for murder. The unique forensic issues raised by these cases are discussed, and their clinical picture presented. A significant percentage of these deaf murderers and defendants had such severely limited communication skills in both English and American Sign Language that they lacked the linguistic ability to understand the charges against them and/or to participate in their own defense. As such, they were incompetent to stand trial, due not to mental illness or mental retardation, but to linguistic deficits. This form of incompetence poses a dilemma to the courts that remains unresolved. This same linguistic disability makes it impossible for some deaf suspects to be administered Miranda Warnings in a way comprehensible to them. This paper identifies the reasons for the communication problems many deaf persons face in court and offers remedial steps to help assure fair trials and police interrogations for deaf defendants. The roles and responsibilities of psychiatric and psychological experts in these cases are discussed. Data are provided on the etiology of the 28 individuals' hearing losses, psychiatric/psychological histories, IQs, communication characteristics, educational levels, and victim characteristics.

Adolescent↗

PubMed1983

On recency and echoic memory.

In short-term memory, the tendency for the last few (recency) items from a verbal sequence to be increasingly well recalled is more pronounced if the items are spoken rather than written. This auditory recency advantage has been quite generally attributed to echoic memory, on the grounds that in the auditory, but not the visual, mode, sensory memory persists just long enough to supplement recall of the most recent items. This view no longer seems tenable. There are now several studies showing that an auditory recency advantage occurs not only in long-term memory, but under conditions in which it cannot possibly be attributed to echoic memory. Also, similar recency phenomena have been discovered in short-term memory when the items are lip-read, or presented in sign-language, rather than heard. This article provides a partial review of these studies, taking a broad theoretical position from which these particular recency phenomena are approached as possible exceptions, to a general theory according to which recency is due to temporal distinctiveness. Much of the fresh evidence reviewed is of a somewhat preliminary nature and it is as yet unexplained by any theory of memory. The need for additional, converging experimental tests is obvious; so too is the need for further theoretical development. Several alternative theoretical resolutions are mentioned, including the possibility that enhanced recency may reflect movement, from sequentially occurring stimulus features, and the suggestion that it may be associated with the primary linguistic mode of the individuals concerned. But special weight is attached to the conjecture that all these recency phenomena might be accounted for in terms of distinctiveness or discriminability. On this view, the enhanced recency effects observed with certain modes, including the auditory mode, are attributed to items possessing greater temporal discriminability in those modes.

Auditory Perception↗

PubMed2003

Biological constraints simplify the recognition of hand shapes.

This study sought to identify constraints that might lead to a concise system of recognizing fingerspelling hand shapes. Previous studies of grasping suggested that hand shape is controlled using combinations of a small number of neuromuscular synergies, but fingerspelling shapes appear to be more highly individuated and, therefore, might require a larger number of degrees of freedom. Static hand postures of the American Sign Language manual alphabet were recorded by measuring 17 joint angles. Principal components (PCs) analysis was compared to the use of subsets of individual variables (i.e., joint angles) for reduction in degrees of freedom. The first four PCs were similar across subjects. Classification using weightings from these four components was 86.6% accurate, while classification using four individual variables was 88.5% accurate (thumb abduction, as well as flexion at the index and middle finger proximal interphalangeal joints and the ring finger metacarpalphalangeal joint). When chosen for each subject, particular four-variable subsets yielded correct rates above 95%. This superior performance of variable subsets over PC weighting vectors suggests that the reduction in degrees of freedom is due to biomechanical and neuromuscular constraints rather than synergistic control. Thus, in future application to dynamic fingerspelling, reasonable recognition accuracy might be achieved with a significant reduction in both computational and measured degrees of freedom.

Cluster Analysis↗

PubMed2006

Electromyographic amplitude variability of chewing cycles in deaf individuals.

This study had the goal of determining if the amplitude of the surface electromyograph signals changes in terms of time of analysis and subjects, deaf or normal listeners, when estimated in a 250 ms of length window, visually determined, considering the most stable signal period from the center of the chewing cycle. In order to do this, groups with control subjects, listeners and deaf individuals, who made use of the Brazilian sign language (LIBRAS), were studied. All participants performed continuous 5 s of chewing for the electromyographic recording of the temporalis and masseter muscles. The normalized RMS values of three chewing cycles were compared between and among groups. The results from the Kruskall-Wallis test did not show any statistically significant differences (p > 0.05) between the normalized RMS values obtained in the three individual chewing cycles, for each of the two completed and evaluated cycles, in both groups studied. The Mann-Whitney test showed that the mean normalized RMS values obtained in the first chewing cycle were higher for the control group when compared to the mean amplitude values of the first chewing cycle of the group of deaf volunteers. It can be concluded that, in these experimental conditions, the RMS values obtained from the select windows of 250 ms length duration, in relatively stable periods of the electromyographic signal of chewing cycles did not suffer any changes in terms of EMG register duration, in both studied groups, but does give evidence of the differences among the groups.

Adolescent↗

PubMed1980

Culture and deafness in a Maya Indian village.

Over the years, the question of psychosocial adjustment among the deaf has attracted a great deal of attention. Pioneer work by Levine (1960, 1963); Rainer, Altshuler, and Kallmann (1963); Myklebust (1964); Rainer and Altshuler (1968); Grinker (1969); Mindel and Vernon (1971); and Schlesinger and Meadow (1972), to mention but a few, has aided our understanding of how the deaf adjust to the stress which their handicap imposes upon them. We know a great deal less, however, about the deaf in other societies. Altable (1947); Altshuler, Vollenweider, and Rainer (1971); Youniss (1974); and Sarfaty and Katz (1978) are among the handful of references which appear, and they all deal with urban populations. Kuschel (1973) considers a single deaf man on Rennell Island, in Polynesia, but his concern is primarily the sign language devised by this ingenious man. As far as I am aware, only Woodward (1978) and his associates have an ongoing program for the investigation of deafness in a nonurban society (Washabaugh, Woodward, and DeSantis, 1978). To neglect the way in which other societies handle these problems is to deprive ourselves of a rich source of comparative data. It is also to avoid a strenuous challenge, for the methodology that is appropriate for use in literate, urban societies may have little applicability in a tribal or peasant group. The purpose of this paper, therefore, is to present preliminary data on a group of profoundly, congenitally deaf Maya Indians of southeastern Mexico, with the aim of suggesting hypotheses which may be investigated by future research. The fieldwork upon which the report is based, however, was not part of a purposeful attempt to study the deaf of the village in question; rather, the village was selected as part of the Maya Film Project, directed by Hubert Smith, and at the time the project took to the field the fieldworkers had no idea that the village eventually chosen would contain a high number of deaf inhabitants.

Adolescent↗